


The After

by PiecesOfScully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, MSR, au in the best way, it is like dana scully meets alice from resident evil, post apocalyptic, pretty scully centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-02-22 08:39:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 34,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13163298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PiecesOfScully/pseuds/PiecesOfScully
Summary: Two years into a post apocalyptic world, Scully searches for Mulder while trying to survive the After.





	1. 1

JUNE, 2002  
7 MILES EAST OF CARLIN, IOWA

Scully tugs at the hood of her jacket, pulling it forward to shield her face from the onslaught of rain that falls from the hazy gray sky. The rural two-lane road before her barely glistens as she walks down the center, and the only sound she hears is her own footfall, the soles of her boots sloshing through the puddles. The soaked tendrils around her face sway heavily with each step she takes, swinging back and forth like auburn pendulums keeping time.  
It’s serene moments like this that she finds herself longing for all of the color that the world used to offer, the vibrant shades of green that would line the horizon at the beginning of summer. After all of the vegetation had finally withered to mush and succumbed to the incessant rain, survivors were left with a bleak perspective. The once bold scenery that was loud with life had fallen mute, luscious trees were stripped bare, grassy fields melted into swamp lands.

Just under two years ago civilization dwindled down to its most basic level, any sort of advancement had ceased, and society had fallen to its knees. After Richter Scale topping earthquakes shook the country and coastal states were broken free, tsunamis that stood hundreds of feet tall towered over sea level and rushed the new shorelines, flooding miles and miles inland. The enormous waves swallowed from the entire state of Maine down to what little of Florida was still attached, from the northern part of Washington through the shards that remained of Oregon and Nevada. Rumor has it that the state of California and the majority of Oregon are the Northern Pacific Ocean’s city of Atlantis.

In just a matter of a few days, a country of fifty states was downsized, cut nearly in half. Roughly thirty states remain. Once the tsunamis had subsided, it had started to rain and has continued every day for the last two years. What some would call a flood, the survivors call The Wash. The orientation of the phrase is unknown, but it spread like wildfire through the the settlements.

As the power grid shut down– submerging the country into darkness– the government fell with it, and a new law arose. The law of survival. Some call what happened Mother Nature’s fury, her retribution for global warming. Others call it an act of God.

Scully doesn’t call it anything. 

Instead, she focuses on the task at hand, and right now her priority is finding shelter, a place to keep dry throughout the night. Through the steady drizzle she flits her eyes across her surroundings every few minutes, searching, pushing herself forward towards wherever she will call home until morning.

She doesn’t allow her mind to wander to the world Before, to the loved ones that probably perished, drowning in the apocalyptic tidal wave. She ignores the thoughts of her mother, of her brothers and their families, replacing the memory of their voices with the dull roar of the storm that unleashes its wrath around her.

Still, it seems that regardless of what she’s doing or how strong her focus is, there is always one person who’s still able to break through. Mulder. 

The treeline parts just as she rounds a curve in the road, and something catches her eye. She pulls her hand from her pocket and shields her eyes as she tips her head upwards, spotting a single-wide mobile home a few hundred feet ahead of her. Even from a distance and in the rapidly falling darkness, she is able to see that the roof is damaged, the far end of it sagging. Most dwellings that she’s come across, whether they be abandoned or occupied, look roughly the same– in such dire need of maintenance that they’re nearly uninhabitable.

The closer she gets, the more the trailer reveals itself to her. Naked tree trunks that surround the dwelling jut out from the muddy earth, their branches reaching towards the sky as if hoping to puncture bits of sunlight from the thick layer of clouds. Random panels of aluminum siding hang haphazardly, exposing rotting wood underneath, and utter darkness swells behind the broken windows. She feels a smile tweak at the corners of her mouth. Darkness means unoccupied, and unoccupied means innocuous solitude. Unphased by its disintegrating appearance, she pushes through the door.

The scent of mold hangs feather-light in the air as she crosses the threshold, a musty odor she’s become accustomed to and has learned to expect. Scully makes quick work of checking the trailer for another nightly squatter or evidence of their possible return, with her flashlight in one hand and knife in the other. She tiptoes across the floor, shifting her weight with caution from one ball of her foot to the other, hoping to avoid weakened floorboards that would announce her presence.

Each of the two bedrooms appear the same, unoccupied and forgotten, whispers of a previous life left behind in sodden furniture and belongings. Mold claims the bathroom, stretching across the walls like an abstract painting as rain falls freely from a hole in the ceiling, cascading below into the blackened tub that was once a pristine white.

As she turns to exit, she catches a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror, and it causes her to pause. Rarely is she afforded a moment of vanity, and it’s even more rare that she takes advantage when the opportunity presents itself, but tonight she’s unable to pull her gaze away. The angle of the flashlight throws jagged shadows across her face, hiding her features beneath a mask of gauntness.

She leans forward and looks closer, her fingertips tracing just below the icy blue eyes peering back at her, and whispers, “Lacrimal bone, maxilla, zygomatic bone.”

The tip of her index finger taps between her eyebrows. “Frontal bone,” she whispers, then drags her finger down the bridge of her slender nose, “nasal bone, septal cartilage.”

“Infraorbital foramen, zygomatic bone,” she finishes as she runs her fingers across high, protruding cheekbones that would have been coveted Before. Allowing her hood to fall down to her shoulders, she searches for any trace of the woman she knew in the person who stares back at her with curious wonder.

With a shallow sigh, she pulls away. Perhaps in another time, another life, she supposes she could be considered beautiful, but now all she sees is a woman with a determination to persevere. An acquaintance to look at, but a survivor at heart.

“Dana-” she says, and her voice cracks, weak from disuse. She clears her throat and begins again. “Dana Katherine Scully. Medical doctor and Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Badge number JTTO 331613. Partner, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and -”

The word ‘lover’ is lost under a sharp clap of thunder, its rumble rolling down the walls around her, pulling her moment of indulgence with it. Without another look to the mirror, she exits the bathroom and collects the pile of tattered blankets and sheets she’d spotted earlier, taking them with her to the kitchen. It takes only a few moments to create a makeshift bed in the corner of cupboards, a nest of fabric that promises warmth and dryness for the remainder of the night.

She peels off her outer layers of clothing and hangs them around the kitchen, then settles in the center of her blankets and pulls her boots and socks from her feet. It hadn’t been The Wash that had claimed the boots’ previous owner’s life, instead it was multiple stab wounds to her abdomen. When Scully had stumbled across her lifeless body in the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio, the woman’s blood had already grown faint, the rain diluting it from a vibrant crimson to a pretty pink, staining her sweater and jacket like a watercolor painting. The hiking boots on her feet, however, were intact, and to Scullys luck, just her size.

Scully stifles a groan as she stretches her toes and rolls her ankles, flexing out the miles of walking, her thumbs massaging away the dampness that seeps deep into the bones.

“Shit,” she utters as her flashlight flickers, then the room goes dark. Her fingers work quickly to unzip her backpack, digging out the battery operated camping lantern, and with a flick of the switch, the kitchen is illuminated under an eerie bluish glow. She pulls other items from the sack and places them on the floor before her, taking inventory.

A can of fruit cocktail, her dinner for the night. Two cans of albacore tuna, two full bottles of water, a half eaten package of trail mix. She shakes the three boxes of matches, and sets them next to a relatively clean pair of socks, and her last prepackaged moist towelette. Three full bottles of Vitamin D, the majority of a broken shoelace, 5 AA batteries, a hunting knife, and a journal, and her backpack is empty.

She frowns at the sight before her. Other than the batteries and the matches, she doesn’t have much she’s willing to part with for a trade, a crucial exchange for food that is in her near future. Antibiotics, chapstick, and batteries of any size are the After’s currency, cash and credit cards now useless. She’s aware that other woman will resort to using their bodies to barter for simple items of survival, selling their time to the highest bidder for whatever the buyer is willing to pay, but the chains of sorrow tighten around her heart at the thought of someone else touching her the way Mulder had Before. A small part of her understands the desperation, but she’d rather go hungry and succumb to the elements.

Her gaze falls on the chest of her jacket that’s dripping dry a few feet away, her eyes zeroing in on the area where a picture is tucked safely in the interior pocket, a captured moment that she carries with her everywhere she goes. She has it memorized, every line of his face, the length of his nose, the subtle pout of his bottom lip. Nights when she’s at her weakest, when she’s overcome with loneliness, she will allow herself to look at it.

“Not tonight,” she tells herself before dry swallowing a Vitamin D capsule, then proceeds to stuff the items spread before her back into her sack, and tucks it behind her back. The ratty blanket scratches at her bare arms as she pulls it to her chin and closes her eyes, the light from the lantern creating shadows that dance along the back of her eyelids. She tries not to imagine that he’s lying behind her and forces herself to focus on the sound of the rain on the roof.

It’s been two years since she’s seen him, two long years that she’s been searching for him in every town she comes across on her journey northwest. She can certainly push through one more night.


	2. Chapter 2

_Scully stands at the sink, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her hands deep in soapy water. A smile spreads across her face when she feels him come up behind her, grazing his fingertips along the curve of her waist._

_His nose nudges against the outer curve of her ear and he whispers, “Hey.”_

_“Just one more minute,” she says. “Almost done.”_

_The plates that had served their spaghetti sit clean in the drying rack, and she pulls a drinking glass from the suds and begins to rinse it beneath the faucet. Dinner and a movie had seemed cliche when Mulder suggested it earlier in the week, but the way his fingers are toying with the skin beneath her sweater has her rethinking the eye roll she tossed him before agreeing. His touch is delicate with the prudence of a new lover, but it’s purposeful._

_Scully places the glass in the drying rack and turns to him, her face merely inches from his chest. He brushes her hair back, tucking some of it behind her ear, and presses his lips to her temple. Scully sighs and leans into him, then tilts her face upwards, her gaze meeting his._

_“You’re ditching me,” she deadpans._

_His brows furrow. “What do you-”_

_“Mulder, there are only two circumstances that prompt you to do that.”_

_“Do what?”_

_“Tuck my hair behind my ear. You do it when you assume I need comfort, or, lately, when you’re about to break the news that you’re ditching me,” she answers. “And I’m not in need of comfort.”_

_He purses his lips, and after a moment he nods, conceding. “I won’t be gone long,” he says. “Two hours, maybe three at most.”_

_Her eyes narrow and he chuckles. “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll bring back some of that chocolate ice cream you like.”_

_Scully runs her hands up his abdomen, feeling the lean muscles beneath the soft cotton of his t-shirt before they come to rest on his chest. “And?”_

_“And I promise,” he says as his hands grip her hips and pull her closer, eliminating any space between them, “that you won’t be getting any sleep tonight.”_

_Scully laughs and kisses him back when he presses his mouth to hers. “Better get moving,” she whispers against his lips. “Don’t want to keep your mysterious informant waiting.”_

_After one last peck on her lips, he pulls on his jacket and heads for her door._

_“Mulder.”_

_He stops in her doorway, and turns to look at her._

_“Don’t do anything stupid.”_

_His eyes light up when he smiles. “I would never,” he says finally, then closes the door behind him. ___

__“Mul-” Like silk, his name slips with ease from her lips as she wakes, but catches at the tip of her tongue as reality sets in. Her apartment fades as she becomes more alert, her cozy furnishings replaced with the drenched walls and ceiling of the trailer, the white noise of her refrigerator running and murmurs from the TV hushed by the sound of the rain. She immediately covers her mouth with her hand, desperate to preserve the lingering taste of him for a few moments longer._ _

__Over the last two years she’s found herself dreaming of him frequently, more often than she would like to admit, especially to herself. When sleeping her consciousness steals the reigns of control and replays memories from years past, torturing her with his touch, his laugh, his voice. Her mind toys with his existence, reminding her of who he was and who he had become to her._ _

__One minute she’s balled up around her backpack, and the next she’s standing at home base with a bat in her hands, Mulder pressed tightly behind her and the stars shining brilliantly in the night sky. Or she’s relaxing on his leather couch with a cold beer, very aware that his bedroom, the destination for the evening, is just a few steps away. Or they’re in her bed, the early morning sun peeking through the break in the curtains as he shifts his weight over her and settles himself between her legs. His whispered promise that they would make it to work on time earns a chuckle from her, and her skin flushes with fresh goosebumps as his teeth skim across the sensitive flesh of her neck._ _

__With a shake of her head, what’s left of him falls away, and she is left with nothing but the present._ _

__She rubs her eyes with her fingers, and forces herself to listen for any indication of impending danger, but hears nothing. The kitchen is still illuminated under the blue glow of her lantern, and the storm outside has lessened from a torrential downpour to a soft pitter-patter. With a groan, she eases herself into a sitting position, and a shiver rakes across her body. She pulls the blanket tight around her shoulders, balling the excess up in her hands._ _

__Coffee. God, she thinks, she would give anything for a hot cup of coffee right now. She salivates at the thought of it. But coffee is a luxury, and luxuries are not something the After has to offer. Not unless you’re willing to pay the price, and most times that price is far too steep._ _

__Her jaw slacks at an awkward angle as she yawns, raising her arms above her head to stretch the tight muscles that line her spine. The blanket drops to the floor and she quickly gathers her belongings, donning her outerwear and slipping the hunting knife into her boot. She makes no move to close cupboard doors as she rummages through the kitchen, signaling to a future squatter that the place has been picked through and to save their time._ _

__Many things may have been lost in an effort to survive the After, but common decency doesn’t have to be one of them, she thinks. A can of carrots and a can of diced potatoes are added to her backpack before she shrugs it on over her rain coat._ _

__The road looks as it did yesterday, and she takes her place on the yellow center line, continuing her journey down the same path. The air bites at the skin of her cheeks, and she allows some of her hair to fall forward in a lame attempt at warmth. By her calculations it’s early June, the beginning of summer, but the temperature has been falling quickly, a bitter warning that snow is in the forecast._ _

__Following the events of two years ago, the change of seasons has been altered. Winter comes late June, blustering through July and August, and a wet midwestern autumn spreads across the rest of the twelve months. Tornadoes and hailstorms are a constant threat for the most of the year, and the only reprieve is the feet of heavy snow, when it’s too cold for the finger of God to swipe away whoever has managed to survive._ _

__“Hey, lady.”_ _

__The prepubescent voice jerks her from her thoughts, and she stops in her tracks when she sees a boy standing a few feet in front of her. He couldn’t be older than fourteen, but he appears to be well nourished. The jacket he wears looks to be a size too small, the zipper pulling at the edges, straining against his little belly. The sleeves fall a few inches above his wrists, and he wears a blue baseball cap to hide his chubby cheeks. Her hands grip the straps of her backpack, tightening them as he steps closer._ _

__“Please, Miss, you gotta have something in that bag,” he says. “My family… we’re all starving.”_ _

__“I have nothing,” she insists and takes a step forward, but stops when he sidesteps again into her path. “Let me pass.”_ _

__“Just one can of food, anything- even dog food. My younger sister, Mara, she’s five. She’s, like, skin and bones, because of not having enough to eat. You could help her.”_ _

__Scully steps forward and pushes past him, but he grips her forearm. “Let me go.”_ _

__“But my sister Kara-”_ _

__Scully turns to him and glares. “You said her name was Mara.”_ _

__The kid stares at her with wide eyes as his mouth opens and closes. Scully can practically see his mind spinning in search of a line to patch up his lie, before he finally screams, “Uncle Chris!”_ _

__Out of the corner of her eye Scully sees two men and a woman appear in the road, the group of three swarming around her and the kid as his fingers dig into her wrist._ _

__“I have nothing you want,” she calls._ _

__She looks at the faces of the adults approaching her, her eyes flitting from person to person, taking in their appearances and searching for vulnerability. The man to her left wears a green ratted sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his head, it’s loose fit making his tall and lanky frame appear thin. His shoulders sag with what can only be exhaustion, the most common ailment in the After. A woman stands a few feet behind the kid and appears to be just as thin as the man. Even under the parka that engulfs her, Scully can see the dark circles that bruise the skin beneath her eyes and the way she carefully balances her weight on her right foot. No obvious weapons._ _

__With the clear weaknesses between the two, Scully’s free hand twitches at the thought of the blade tucked safely in her boot. It would only take a moment to reach down and-_ _

__A jerky movement to her right catches her attention. Scully turns to look at the last adult, the man she’d nearly forgotten about, and gasps. His dark hair hangs in short spikes around his face, directing her gaze to his protruding nose and full lips. If it weren’t for his brown eyes, she would have sworn that it was Mulder._ _

__“Just give them your backpack, lady,” the kid says. “We wanna get out of The Wash as much as you do. Just hand it over, and you can go.”_ _

__“No one has to get hurt here,” the Mulder lookalike says. The others nod in agreement, and all falls quiet. The beat of silence feels as if it stretches on for hours as Scully remembers the woman from Ohio, the memory of her blood-stained sweater creeping from the back of her mind. She remembers praying as she pulled the boots from the woman’s lifeless feet, and the many apologies she whispered as she searched her pockets before finding a knife along the inner lining of the woman’s jacket._ _

__The law of survival._ _

__Scully closes her eyes and sighs deeply, before taking a final look at the four strangers, and whispers, “I’m sorry.”_ _

__“Whatcha say?” the woman in the parka asks._ _

__Time seems to slow as the three adults shift on their feet, but Scully says nothing as they advance on her. The woman reaches out, but before she’s able to make contact, Scully breaks free of the kid and shoves him. He stumbles back and trips on his feet, landing on his butt with a startled “oomf.”_ _

__They appear stunned at her sudden act of aggression, and Scully takes advantage of their lapse of control by leaning down and pulling the knife from her boot. She spins on her heels and shoves into the woman’s left side, knocking her back. Scully slashes her knife to the left and the right, and the woman cries out as the blade cuts through the down filling of her jacket, slicing twice into her upper arm. The woman recoils, wailing as she limps back a few steps, cradling her bleeding arm to her chest._ _

__In her periphery, Scully vaguely registers seeing the kid lose a shoe as he scurries backwards, still on his bottom, with wide eyes._ _

__The man in the green hoodie rushes Scully with his arms opened wide, and she ducks beneath them, then loops her arm around his neck, pulling him to her as she thrust her six inch blade into his lower back._ _

__“Chris!” Scully hears the Mulder lookalike scream._ _

__Drips of blood fling into the air as she wrenches her knife free and turns around, paying no attention as her attacker slumps to the ground with a deep groan. Instead, she glares at the last man standing, watches as he squares his shoulders._ _

__“Colin, get outta here,” he hollers over his shoulder without taking his eyes off of Scully. The kid grabs his shoe and sprints out of sight without putting it back on._ _

__Scully’s chest heaves as she struggles to control her breathing, each breath thinning the adrenaline that surges through her veins. Her fingers tighten around the butt of the knife, and she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, her eyes daring him to make a move._ _

__“Don’t follow the kid, Red,” he says through gritted teeth. His hands ball into tight fists._ _

__“Wasn’t planning on it,” Scully replies._ _

__The Mulder lookalike glances back at the woman in the parka, then to his friend that lay bleeding at Scully’s feet. “Take your shit and-” he starts, but is interrupted by the woman._ _

__“What? No fuckin’ way, she doesn’t get to just bail!”_ _

__Scully cringes under the feeling of his eyes scanning over her, trailing from her head down to her boots, then back up again. He smirks. “She’ll get hers,” he says finally._ _

__A trial sized container of shampoo rolls from the pocket of the fallen mans sweatshirt, claiming Scully’s attention as it bumps into her boot. Holding the Mulder-lookalikes glare, Scully squats to retrieve her souvenir, then takes her time wiping the blood that coats her knife onto her pants and tucks the blade into her boot. Then, without another word, she pushes past the man and woman, training her eyes from the road before her, refusing to look back at the group. With each step she purposely keeps an easy gait, slowly putting more distance between them. Running shows fear, and fear leaves you bleeding to death in the middle of the road. Her hands begin to shake once her footfall drowns out their bickering about how to handle their fallen friend._ _

__The group is a distant memory when Scully approaches the road’s end, forcing her to choose which way to continue her journey- left or right. Both directions appear the same- long stretches of asphalt, equally deserted and wet. A greyish brown swampland lay open before her, extending to the horizon’s edge like a sea of chocolate malt. It feels like a lifetime ago that she and Mulder were met with the same predicament, chasing trains carrying the alien virus in the dead of night, surrounded by desert and cornfields. He’d chosen to continue straight ahead, staying true to his rebellious nature and forging his own path._ _

__Scully stands stoically at the intersection, and slips her hand under her jacket, mindlessly brushing the edge of Mulder’s picture. Her faith in mankind may have faltered, but her faith that she will find him hasn’t. She has been vigilant in her search for him. Long days were spent along the new coast, and hundreds of miles were walked inland. She looks for him in each face that passes, examining the men in every bar and brothel. His picture has been laid with hope on many tables, only to be crushed by the the words ‘never seen him’ or ‘looks familiar, but couldn’t tell ya which way he went.’_ _

__New town, same disappointment._ _

__She runs her thumb along the corner of his picture one last time, closes her jacket, and strides with her head held high to the left. She’ll find him. The journal that hides at the bottom of her backpack may be the true purpose of her journey northwest, but she’ll never stop looking for him._ _


	3. Chapter 3

The town’s skyline punches into the pink smear of clouds; the silhouette of the bulky buildings feigning quality and security against the sun’s setting in the horizon. Her stomach begs for food with a sharp grumble, but she pushes forward at the promise of a dry room and bed, justifying skipping lunch and pushing off dinner.

Candlelight flickers in windows as she passes a few modest houses, walking down the center of Main Street into the heart of town. Water rushes along the sides of the street carrying debris and litter like paper boats to the lowest point, cluttering into a pile of trash somewhere unseen. Scully swallows her revulsion as she walks, unable to ignore the deep ache in her feet and the chattering of her teeth.

A sense of relief floods through her as a broad building comes into view just a block ahead of her. Multiple windows are boarded up with pieces of particleboard and wedges of spare wood, closing off of the gaping holes and offering protection from the Wash. The sign that reads Hampton Inn wails under the gusts of wind, the bursts of current weakening the corroded bolts with each squall, and Scully instinctively ducks as she passes underneath it. 

Cardboard covers the glass paned doors at the entrance, but where the name of the hostel would normally be written is a note to incoming patrons, scrawled with haste in black paint. 

NO GOODS- NO WOOD  
NO TRADE- NO MAID  
NO PAY- NO PLAY

The warmth nearly smothers her as she pushes through the doors, stealing her breath as it demands feeling into her numb fingers and cheeks. Scully drops her hood to her shoulders and through the dim light she’s able to see that the lobby has been transformed into a makeshift bar, a handful of men line up at what was previously the check-in counter, waiting to trade whatever they have for food and services. Dozens of patrons are perched at round tables that are scattered throughout, their heavy jackets hung on the back of chairs and their feet propped up on the tabletops.

Scully stands at the door and scans her eyes across the crowd, focusing on one man for a fleeting moment, only to move onto the next, then the next. She searches beneath the sea of scraggly facial hair for a glimpse of an ally, a loved one, anyone from the past in the lines of their faces.

Hearty bursts of laughter and feminine giggles erupt as women peruse from table to table with their cleavage spilling from their tops, lounging in the laps of strange men, leaning over to pass a drink as the curve of their buttcheeks peeks out from the frayed bottom of their cut off jeans. No one passes the small bundled woman a second glance as she weaves through, the shells of peanuts crunching under her boots.

“I told ya the last time Keira,” she hears a man’s voice boom over the chatter. She looks to the end of the counter and sees a burly man towering over a blonde woman, his thick black beard hanging to the center of his chest. “No pay, no play!”

Scully crosses towards them, watching as Keira rolls her eyes. “They all play the same, Bobby. No pay at first, but you get them going and pull back, and suddenly they got a handful of goods.”

Bobby slams his fist down on the counter. “Those ain’t my rules-”

“Excuse me,” Scully says.

Bobby’s expression sours and a deep wrinkle forms between his chunky eyebrows as he turns to her. A scar runs from the corner of his left eye down the center of his cheek, still pink suggesting that it’s just healed over, and jagged like a backroad on a map. His eyes are a piercing blue, and his lips curl into a snarl. “Whattya want?”

Keira backs away a few steps, then spins on her heels and crosses to a table of men who greet her with whoops of praise for returning.

“Hey!” Bobby yells once he realizes she’s gone, then grumbles under his breath when she flashes him a toothy smile.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Scully says as she places a box of matches in front of her.

“I’m sure you are,” Bobby replies dryly, then repeats himself. “Whattya want?”

“A room.”

“For the hour?”

Scully’s eyebrow rises. “For the night.”

“Ya sure ‘bout that?” Bobby’s beard flops against his chest and his hair reaches the middle of his back as he tips his head to bark out a laugh, and gestures to the women around her. “I’m sure we have *something* that could satisfy ya, and it won’t require the full night.”

“I just want a dry bed and a quiet room,” she says as she pushes the matches towards him, then adds, “to myself. For the night.”

Bobby narrows his eyes at the matches, then shakes his head. “What else ya got?”

Scully pulls her backpack around to her side and fishes out the can of diced potatoes, then places it on the counter. She catches the key that Bobby pulls from his pocket and slides towards her.

“Be out by sun up,” he says.

“One last thing-”

“Lady, I got a business to run here.”

“Of course,” Scully utters as she pulls Mulder’s picture from her pocket, then holds it up for him to see. “Have you seen this man?”

Bobby flicks his eyes towards the picture, then turns suddenly when he hears a crash come from the other end of the room. “Hey, knock that shit off!” he bellows.

“Please-” Scully starts.

“Sonofabitch, these fuckers have _no respect _\- ah, now what’re ya sayin’?” he asks before he ducks behind the counter.__

__“My friend,” Scully calls over the clattering of cans being dropped to the floor. She stands on her tip-toes and leans over the counters edge. Bobby squats next to a few torn boxes, throwing canned goods into a sturdy wooden crate. She clears her throat, and asks, “Have you seen him in your establishment?”_ _

__“He’s lookin’ pretty clean for these parts,” Bobby says over his shoulder._ _

__“It’s an old picture. From Before.”_ _

__“Pretty boy,” he says with a snort. “That your man?”_ _

__Scully rolls her eyes. “Have you seen him?”_ _

__Bobby stands and dusts his hands off on his jeans. “Nope.”_ _

__“You barely looked at the picture,” Scully says. She thrusts the picture closer to him. “Look again.”_ _

__“I said I ain’t seen him,” he replies with a pointed look, and turns to cross to the other end of the counter._ _

__Scully scrambles to follow him, pushing through the cluster of men waiting to trade for a drink. “Mind if I ask a few of your visitors?”_ _

__“Do what you like, lady,” Bobby yells, then with the loud slam of his hands on the counter, she’s forgotten. “Now, boys, what’ll it be?”_ _

__Scully pulls her hood over her head and turns away from the crowd, towards a sign that hangs by a single nail along the back wall. ‘THE NIGHT’ is scrawled in paint across a chunk of plywood with a jagged arrow pointing towards the stairs. Below it hangs another handmade sign with an arrow that points to the hallway, the glow of dim oil lanterns lighting the path to each room. The doors are shut tight with red rags hanging from the doorknobs of a few. HOURLY._ _

__The ruckus of the bar falls nearly silent as the door to the stairwell closes behind her, and she’s met with complete darkness, the comfort of light spared for those who seek immediate service and pay for companionship. Her heart rate quickens as the darkness permeates around her with the dampness of a thick fog, her chest constricting with heaviness as she wades deeper. Her shallow breaths hiss in her ears, and her eyes grow wide with the insistence to see. She reaches out blindly for something to grab onto, waving her hand in front of her until it connects with the anchor in the ocean of black, the cool metal of the hand rail._ _

__Her palm is moist with sweat as she curls her fingers around it, gripping it tightly. The toes of her boots nudge against the edge of each step as she guides herself upwards to the landing, the thwack followed by the dull thump of her sole, creating the rhythm that sounds like a slow, controlled heartbeat. Once reaching the top of the staircase, she hurries to thrust herself through the door at her right, gulping in air as she emerges into an open hallway._ _

__There are less lanterns that line this corridor, the dome of illumination reaching as far as it’s able, extending to an abrupt ending halfway down the hall. Absolute silence follows her like a shadow as she crosses to the first room on her right, the key slipping with ease into the keyhole. With a snick of the latch and a squeak of the hinges, she’s in her room and closing the door behind her._ _

__A blanket lay in a heap atop of an otherwise bare mattress, and an oil lantern burns brightly on top of a crate next to it. Drapes still hang over the windows, covered with brownish stains spattering from rod to hem, but intact, the rain and wind blocked by the wood nailed up behind them. She locks the door behind her and pushes the only chair beneath the doorknob. Once satisfied in her solitude, her outer clothing comes off piece by piece, shedding the layers of dampness until she wears only a tank top and panties, and spreads each item across the floor to dry._ _

__The blanket feels soft against her skin, promising her a dry warmth that has become so rare as she wraps it around her shoulders, and she lowers herself to the mattress. She doesn’t wonder who slept in the room before her, or the cause behind the deep notches in the drywall. She doesn’t notice that the television has been ripped from the outlet, a gaping hole and torn wallpaper left behind in its absence. Every settlement she’s come across offers an establishment like this one, each one strikingly similar to the one before. Strictly the bare minimum offered for temporary relief._ _

__Her spine pops twice as she reclines into the center of the mattress and allows her gaze to wander around the room, before landing on a contraption tucked into the corner. A large metal bowl sits propped up a foot from the ground, metal prongs encircling it and holding it in position. A smile spreads across Scully’s face as she rolls to her side and pulls a bottle of water from her backpack, then grabs the lantern and crosses to sit cross-legged before the device. She carefully pulls the globe from the burner and sets it aside, then places the burner beneath the bowl, adjusting the ratchet to advance the wick. The flame grows and licks the bottom of the metal, the bowl hissing as she fills it nearly to the rim with water._ _

__As it warms, she retrieves the shampoo from her jacket pocket and strips naked, then again takes her place at the contraption. Her smile widens as she balls her tank-top in the palm of her hand and dips it into the water, a moan vibrating her teeth as she rings it out across her chest. Beads of hot water stream over her breasts and down her belly, collecting to a puddle between her legs before soaking into the carpet._ _

__The heat radiates through her skin and seeps into her bones, thawing the aching chill as she glides the wet tank-top down her arms, sides, and legs, breaking contact only long enough to gather more water. The shampoo smells like flowers and she works it into a lather between her hands, the bubbles pungent with the scent of spring and opaque with the distant memories of sunshine kissing her cheeks._ _

__Goosepimples freckle across her limbs as a draft brushes past her body, and she shivers as it bleeds across her skin, finding herself actually missing the days of sunburn and aloe. Her fingers spread the soap across her body, slipping slightly as they gently knead her tired muscles and scrub away the filth of the After._ _


	4. Chapter 4

The bar is full of life as Scully turns the corner from the quiet hallway to the lobby. Each chair and table is occupied with bodies, dozens of men and women cluttered into the open room. The counter, however, sits empty except for Bobby wiping the top with a rag. She shifts the weight of her backpack to one shoulder, then pushes her way through the crowd until she’s across from the owner.

Scully clears her throat twice, but he each time he refuses to acknowledge her. His gaze doesn’t break from his rag that passes leisurely swipes across the laminate. Between the chipped surface and the peeling of the edges, the countertop shines.

“Do you sell food here?” Scully asks finally.

Bobby barely lifts his face to throw her a glance, then shrugs. “Depends on what you’re looking for.”

“Something dry.”

“Also depends on what you’ve got to pay,” he adds. 

She pulls her second box of matches and two AA batteries from her pack and lay them on the counter. “They’re fully charged,” she says while rolling the batteries beneath her fingertips.

Bobby stares at her for a few moments, then nods once. “Wait here, Red.”

Her eyes follow him as he walks to the far end of the counter and hollers at a working woman standing just a few feet away. To Scully, his voice is drowned out by the chaos of the bar, but the woman nods in understanding. After she disappears around the back, Bobby walks back to his place, standing before Scully.

“Go sit. Jenny will bring you out something.”

“Sit?” Scully asks as she scans the room full of men, then turns back to Bobby. “Where?”

Bobby chuffs. “Pick a lap, Red.”

She wanders through the haze of cigarette smoke, dodging animated hand gestures deep in conversation and swinging elbows, for what feels like hours before finding a small table nestled alone in the back of the room. She takes a seat in the single chair and tucks her backpack safely behind her legs, turning herself so she has a clear view of the entire crowd. 

At the next table a group of men play cards, and she watches as they toss one after another into a heaping pile in the center. Empty shot glasses and half-full pitchers of water sit haphazardly around the tabletop, shaking each time one of the men bump the edge of the table. The man to woman ratio appears to be decent in this location, Scully muses as she watches two women saunter to the group and position themselves into the laps of strangers. Roughly 2:1, maybe 3:1 on a slow day. Most settlements she’s taken shelter at tend to keep the majority of their women hidden, their value for trade too high.

Scully remembers a time when everyone flaunted their financial worth, wearing it proudly in the form of expensive clothing, jewelry, and shoes. But now everyone tucks away that of which holds the most worth, such as her vitamins and journal, keeping them hidden from the sight and hands of others. Her legs instinctively tighten against her backpack.

A gust of cold air sweeps through the lobby as the front door bursts open, the smoke propelled to the back and down the hall as four large men rush towards the counter. Their heads are held high as they stride through clusters of people, shouting greetings along the way. Each of the men carry backpacks and sacks, each bag bulging and stuffed full, appearing as if it were about to burst at the seams. 

“Yo, Bobby!” one of the men yells as he dumps his bag onto the counter. Its contents litter the surface in front of him, and he laughs. “Bobbaaay!”

The other three men circle around him, patting him on the back. The proud man turns, and Scully’s breath catches in her chest. The Mulder lookalike from the altercation earlier in the day smiles brightly, his teeth whiter than most in the After, and Scully turns away quickly, hoping he didn’t see her.

He would recognize her, and the last thing she wants tonight is more trouble. From the corner of her eye she searches for his fallen friend, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

“Whatdja bring me, boys?” Scully hears Bobby’s voice before she sees him emerge from the back, and strut to the group of men. Items on the counter get pushed to the side in two piles, what Scully assumes is ‘keep’ and ‘discard,’ before he brings a bottle to his face and gives it a shake.

“We did good, boss,” one of the men says.

“Hell yeah we did,” another one agrees. “Got you some pills and everything.”

Bobby reads the label on the bottle. “This says ibuprofen.”

“Yeah!”

“What the hell is this going to do for the deficiency? I said Vitamin D, not a fucking anti inflammatory.”

“It’s still a good haul, boss,” the Mulder lookalike says.

“Good ain’t the word I’d use,” Bobby says with a shake of his head. “Decent, Joe.”

Scully’s eyebrow rises at use of his name. It’s more common than she is expecting, more ordinary than name of the man that he slightly resembles.

“We’ll get back out there and find ya some,” Joe says. “There’s areas we still haven’t searched, bags we still haven’t emptied.”

Bobby laughs and slaps Joe on the shoulder, causing the man to recoil. “Ah, don’t be such a pussy, Joe,” Bobby barks, and then punches his other shoulder. Joe leans into the counter, wincing. Bobby continues, “Your bones can’t be that brittle, not yet anyways.”

“You Red?” Scully jumps at the feminine sounding voice coming from behind her. She spins in her seat to see Jenny standing a few inches away. Her blonde hair falls in wavy tendrils across her collarbones as she cocks her head to the side, impatience wrinkling the smooth skin above her eyebrows. “Are you Red?” she asks again, slower this time.

“Yeah,” Scully answers.

Jenny walks around her and drops a sleeve of unopened saltines and a can of chicken on the table.

“Do you guys have any coffee?” Scully asks.

“Yeah, but supply’s low. It’s expensive.”

Scully opens the crackers and slips one into her mouth, saying nothing. Her tastebuds feel as if they’re going to explode as the salt immediately begin to dissolve on her tongue.

“Good, huh?” Jenny asks.

Scully hums in response, chewing slowly. Dry goods are steadily becoming more rare with each day that passes, the Wash saturating everything within reach, slowly drowning everything in its path. She relishes in the crisp feel of the cracker between her teeth. The groan of annoyance in the back of her mouth is swallowed with her bite of food as Jenny continues to hover, then pulls up a chair and seats herself at the table.

“I’m all set,” Scully says, keeping her eyes trained on the can of chicken that sits between them, but Jenny relaxes into the back of the chair and sighs. Scully licks her lips, savoring the salty taste, then slides the woman a few of the saltines.

“I’m Jenny,” she says in lieu of a thank you, and places them in a neat stack.

Scully nods, hoping that keeping conversation to a minimum will encourage her to take the snack and scoot on to the next table.

Jenny pulls a cracker from the top of her stack and breaks it down the center. “You have a name?”

“Red’s fine.” Scully shifts in the chair, turning her right side to Jenny, and casts her gaze out on the crowd. She runs the pad of her thumb along the salt on the cracker, then brings it to her mouth and slips half of it between her lips. It breaks between her teeth with a glorious snick, then begins melting in against her tongue almost instantly.

“So, where ya from?” Jenny asks. “I’m from Illinois, but I’ve been here for about six months now.”

“East coast.”

“The _After _east coast?” Jenny asks with wide eyes. “Because I heard that once the waves hit, no one from the Before could have survived. Drowned and swept out to sea, millions of people gone just like that,” she says with a snap of her finger.__

__Scully shudders and closes her eyes, trying to quiet the screams that still haunt her dreams and buzz like white noise in the back of her mind. She can still hear them as if she were still there, their cries of fear like the high-pitched wailing of flutes and piccolos over the wave’s roaring percussion of thunder. Shrill like the accidental slip of a bow on a violin, their yelps and shrieks burst into a staccato rhythm around her. She holds her breath and bears down, begging them to fall silent, but in her mind they crescendo, falling slightly off key as they grow with intensity from forte to fortissimo, and her chest burns with the muscle memory of running, running, running._ _

__“New York?” she hears Jenny ask and the orchestra of terror crashes into a piercing silence within her_ _

__“I’m sorry, what?” Scully asks breathlessly._ _

__“New York. I bet that’s where you’re from, am I right?”_ _

__“Close enough,” Scully mutters and tucks an errant strand of hair behind her ear with a shaky hand. A thinly veiled silence falls between the two as Jenny chews, and Scully throws a quick prayer of thanks to God and the cracker._ _

__“So, Bobby said you were lookin’ for someone,” Jenny says breaking the quiet as quickly as it had settled, and Scully sighs._ _

__“I am.”_ _

__“Is your man from the east coast, too?”_ _

__Scully nods._ _

__“You travelled all this way to find him?”_ _

__Scully forces a smile. “Something like that.”_ _

__“Oh, right,” Jenny says. “So, were you both there when ‘It’ happened? Like, did you see the earthquakes and-”_ _

__“No,” Scully answers interrupting, locking her eyes with Jenny. “You ask a lot of questions.”_ _

__Jenny giggles and then shrugs one of her bare shoulders. “I guess I just like people, because everyone has a story to tell. Ya know, I was in school for cosmetology before…” She clears her throat and waves her hand in the air. “Before. I wanted to be a manicurist, do people’s nails. Ladies are always happier when their nails look pretty.”_ _

__Scully tucks her hands in her lap and leans back into her chair._ _

__“Can I see?”_ _

__“See what?” Scully asks, her hands balling into fists of their own accord. Long gone were the days that she cared much about her appearance, let alone her cuticles and nail shape._ _

__“The picture of your man. Bobby said you were flashin’ one around when you first got here. Maybe I’ll recognize him.”_ _

__“Doubt it,” Scully replies as she pulls it from her pocket and slides it across the table. Jenny takes it into her hands, and runs her fingers along the edges. She turns it to the side, examining it closely as if it were a critical piece of evidence._ _

__“Looks familiar,” she says finally._ _

__Scully chuffs. If she had a bottle of vitamin D for every time someone said that, she would be considered the Queen of the After._ _

__“No, really!” Jenny insists. “There’s a man that came through a few months back. He hung around for awhile, good looking like him,” she says tapping her finger on Mulder’s face. “We all flocked to him, trying to make a buck off some fresh meat, but he shot everyone one of us down. Well, everyone but Becky over there.”_ _

__Scully turns to follow Jenny’s pointed finger and almost laughs. Becky’s long hair sways as a man dips her and presses his face into her cleavage, it’s auburn coloring radiant in the glow of the lanterns. Scully purses her lips, tamping down on the spark of hope that comes to life within her. She’s done this a thousand times, she reminds herself. She’s lived in that daydream as she entered each new settlement, unable to shake the determination that this one was it. This was the day that she would finally find him._ _

__“What was his name?” Scully asks in spite of herself._ _

__Jenny cocks her head to the side and hums. “Couldn’t tell ya. Never offered it, and I never asked. He took off after a few weeks, rumor says he was headed south.”_ _

__“South,” Scully repeats, her voice sounding strained to her own ears, as if she had been punched in the gut and whimpered. Her chest tightens as she feels the war initiate between her heart and her brain, the love she holds for him squaring up to the reality that this could be another false lead. Her journey northwest is of the utmost importance, but Mulder._ _

__Mulder._ _

__“But I heard from Becky,” Jenny adds, keeping her voice low, “that he’s still hanging around. She says he still calls on her every once in awhile when Bobby ain’t lookin’.”_ _

__Scully pulls the picture from Jenny’s hands and tucks it into the back pocket of her jeans. “Did she say where he’s staying?”_ _

__“I don’t know how much credit I’d give her,” Jenny says with a grimace. “I mean, she’s loose-lipped and known to lie-”_ _

__“Where?” Scully insists._ _

__Jenny leans back into her chair, and Scully questions how genuine the smile is that spreads across the woman’s face. “There’s an old Motel 6 at the other end of town,” she says finally. “Room 4.”_ _


	5. Chapter 5

Motel 6 at the other end of town, she thinks.

Jenny’s words repeat over and over in her head like a broken record. A Motel 6, just like the lifetime Before when they had spent their nights chasing monsters and a shadow government. At the other end of town, just a few miles away. 

As she rushes up the dark stairway, she tries to force away the smile that twitches the corners of her mouth at the possibility that this could be the closest she’s been to him in almost two years. She swallows the hiccup of excitement that bubbles up her chest as she hurries to her room, reminding herself that she might be too late. He may have already left.

She refuses to allow herself to consider the fact that it might not be him at all. Not now, not after the information that he could be so close. Scully knows that if she entertains that thought then it will overrule everything, and she will simply continue on her journey northwest having never known the truth. Life in the After is full to the brim with ‘what if’s, and she doesn’t know that she can shoulder another, carrying it with her day to day like a screaming monkey on her back. She doesn’t have the strength.

Scully is pulling her still damp sweater over her head when there’s a knock at her door. She pauses, staring at the door, waiting for an announcement of arrival that doesn’t come. The knife in her boot rubs against her ankle as she steps towards the door, and peers through the peephole.

Bobby.

“What do you need?” she calls through the door.

“Well now, Red, I heard from a little ol’ birdy that you were leavin’.”

After a moment, Scully opens the door a crack, enough for her face to peek through. Bobby smirks at the sight of her, and she squares her shoulders. “I’ll be out in ten minutes. Just packing up.”

“You just paid for the room,” he says as he crosses his arms over his chest. “Where you running off to?”

“I just need to be on my way,” Scully says and begins to shut the door, but Bobby’s shoves the toe of his boot in small opening, stopping it. His eyes narrow as he leans forward and grips the door jamb above her, his fingernails scratching as they dig into the wood.

“Which way you headin’?” The scent of whiskey sweetens the bitterness of his breath that comes in gusts from above her, and for the first time she actually feels the size of the man. Standing at a few inches over six feet tall, he towers over her with a neck as thick as his upper arms that look as if they could bench press her with ease. He’s the kind of man that even linebackers would shy away from.

“South,” she lies.

“Right, well you leavin’ early means you gotta pay the cancellation fee.”

Scully’s brows furrow. “The what?”

“That’s the rules, so whattya got in there?” he asks, ignoring her question, and pushes at the door. Scully follows his lead, stopping it with the toe of her boot.

“I gave you what I had for trade already.”

He clicks his tongue. “I doubt that, Red.”

The knife singes the thin skin across her ankle, burning with the desire to be used. “I have nothing left to trade,” she says as she pulls it from her boot. Her fingers work around the butt of the handle, flexing and curling it into her palm. “I’ll be out of here in five minutes, and you’ll have your room open for rent again.”

She watches as Bobby tips his head to the side and stares at her for a moment, the icy blue shadowed by the contemplation of his choices but bright with greed. This circumstance is one she’s too familiar with, standing inches from a situation that is a breath away from becoming ugly with nothing more than a boot against the door enforcing peace. Just let me leave, she pleads with the rise of her brows, and her fingernails dig crescent shapes into the flesh of her palm as she grips her knife tighter.

She releases the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding when she sees him nod once. The words ‘thank you’ fall flat as he shoves the door, her forehead catching the brunt of the hit. She stumbles backwards as he barrels into the room, dropping her knife as she catches herself on the back of the chair. Her vision blurs as he pushes past her and snatches her backpack up from the floor.

“No!” she screams, and rushes towards him. The back of his hand catches her cheek and her head whips to the side, the metallic taste of blood coats her tongue as she falls to the floor. She closes her eyes as a piercing throb explodes in her temples and radiates down the side of her face. Her eyes open almost immediately as she feels his hand around her throat, the butt of his hand applying just enough pressure to cut off her air supply as his fingertips dig into the sides.

“You try that again, I’ll break your neck like a fucking twig, Red, and leave your dead ass in here to rot.” Her fingernails dig and scrape the skin of his hands and along his forearms, but he doesn’t flinch. His grip on her neck tightens. She feels tears stream into her hairline as her chest heaves, silently screaming for oxygen. He leans closer. Darkness bleeds into her peripheral vision, leaving only the clear sight of Bobby’s face in the center; a face she’s sure will haunt her dreams for the next few nights. “I will use what’s left of you to make chapstick and find that man in your picture and sell it to him for cheap, ya got me?”

She isn’t given the chance to agree before he lets go and shoves her to her side. Coughs wrack through her ribcage with such force she fears a fracture, and the carpet scratches her face as she gulps in air. Pressure pounds like a sledgehammer at the top of her forehead. A spark of light off to the side catches her attention, and her eyes strains to focus on it. She almost whimpers when it comes into view.

Her knife.

Just a few feet away the blade glimmers under the stable flame of the lantern, and she reaches for it. Behind her, she hears the zipper of her backpack forced open, followed by the thud of items falling to the floor.

“Not,” she utters through clenched teeth, then coughs. “Yours.”

“It is now, you lying bitch. Water, canned food, shampoo… You’ve been holding out- ah, what’s this?”

Scully groans as she pushes herself onto her hands and knees, her head light with dizziness. She jumps when her backpack lands at her side, and she forces another cough to cover the sound of the vitamins rattling in their bottle.

“Nimbostratus,” she hears him say slowly, sounding out the word. “Sufficient vertical extent to produce sufficient precipitation.”

“It’s nonsense,” she utters through clenched teeth. Her stomach turns as she climbs to her feet, one hand gripping the back of the chair, the other gripping her knife. She ignores the blood that trails down her forehead and swallows the bile that burns the back of her throat.

“What in the actual flying fuck- Red, you’ve really been holding out on me. Diagrams, formulas, a list of dates… this is some kinda weather physics,” he says as he flips the pages. “Are you tracking the Wash or somethin’?”

“Or somethin’,” she says, then pushes off the chair and lunges forward. When she collides into him, they spin like a pair of skilled ballroom dancers. His hands grip her waist as her knife stabs into him twice, three times, four, and they collapse onto the mattress together with his eyes wide and his mouth releasing nothing more than a gurling grunt.

She rolls off of him and scampers around the room, collecting her belongings, stuffing her minimal life into her backpack. She throws a glance his way after she zips it shut, just as he rolls to his side. Blood smears across his large hands, pooling from in between his fingers, staining the blanket as he pulls it tight against his belly.

“You bitch,” he hisses. “You’ll get yours.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Scully pulls on her jacket, swings the backpack over her shoulders, and rushes out the door. She takes the stairs two at a time, and tucks her blood covered hands deep in her pockets as she hurries through the lobby full of patrons.

A woman stands partially cloaked by shadows by the main door, leaning into the frame. As Scully gets closer, the woman side-steps into Scully’s path, blocking the exit as she turns into the warm glow of the lobby.

“You leaving?” Jenny asks.

Scully pulls her hood over her head, watching as Jenny’s eyes flick to the exposed skin of her hands, her gaze lingering at the still wet blood that stains past the sleeves. Scully stands tall and slides her hands back into her pockets. “I am.”

Jenny turns and pushes the door open. Scully offers her a quick smile, then brushes past her and into the Wash. Once she hears the door close behind her, she sprints. She runs until she can no longer hear the pitiful whine of the Hampton Inn sign, and her ribcage twinges beneath the sharp stabs of pain. She slows to a brisk walk, every few steps glancing behind her, praying she hasn’t been followed.

The rain and wind whip at her as she navigates through what remains of the town, the impending winter chill seeping through her heavy clothing, freezing her joints into lethargy. The clouds hang heavily in the sky, unwavering, forcing the moon and its light into a dark submission. Any other night she would have searched out a vacant dwelling for shelter by now, not pushing through frigid temperatures with nothing more than a days worth of food and a glimmer of hope.

She considers stopping, but the thought is fleeting, disappearing almost as quickly as it appears when an After worn sign comes into view.

Motel 6.

A body of water surrounds the motel, rushing and swelling along the lower ground like a moat promising security for a castle, with only a single entrance and exit to the building. Gravel and shattered glass crunch under Scully’s boots as she passes the front office. What was once enclosed by large, square windows, has now fallen victim to the Wash. Drywall dips and hangs from the ceiling with blackened insulation spilling from the gaping holes, piles of it are scattered across the front desk and the floor. Travel pamphlets lay scattered throughout, their pictures warped and smeared with mud. The ‘OPEN’ sign still hangs, lopsided, at the top of the front door.

The earthy smell of rotting wood rolls the nervous flutter behind her bellybutton, and she wills the acute nausea away as she continues towards room number four. She might have missed him, she could be too late. The curtains are drawn shut, but she still attempts to peer between them as she passes the rooms window.

It might not even be him.

She stops just before the simple, brown door, unaware of how long she’s been gripping his picture like a rosary against her chest.

Please let it be him, she prays.

She feels her heartbeat beneath the palm of her hand, the eighth note tempo beating the moments that tick by like the frantic striking of a drum. Her breaths come in short bursts, her warm exhalations freezing into tiny clouds before disappearing into nothing. She finds it almost humorous that she’s merely inches from this defining moment, yet she can’t bring herself to knock on the door. She almost smiles.

Her hand shakes as she pulls it from beneath her jacket, and knocks. The doorknob jiggles once, then twists and the door opens an inch.

“What do you want?” a voice calls, and Scully’s breath catches in her throat.

“Mulder?” Her eyes burn with unshed tears, and she inches forward. “Mulder, is that you?”

“Scully?”

She squints, as if straining her eyes will assist her brain in registering the use of her name. It’s been so long since she’s heard it, that she’s forgotten what it sounds like coming from another’s mouth. She opens her mouth to ask him to repeat it, when the door swings open and disappears into the shadows, taking her request and the rest of the world with it. All that’s left is him standing before her.

Mulder. Her Mulder.

“Scully,” he whispers, and reaches for her.

If anyone were to ask her what happened next, she would only be able to describe it as an episode of insanity. She feels her fingers curl, her nails piercing into the flesh of her palm, and the next thing she is aware of is her fist connecting with his jaw.


	6. Chapter 6

She isn’t sure if it’s the biting sting in her knuckles or the vindication she feels that draws tears to her lower lash line and memories of the last two years flooding into the back of her mind. The endless nights she spent dreaming of him only to wake up cold and alone, her refusal to believe that he had perished upon leaving another settlement empty handed, the nagging disappointment that he may have simply abandoned her lingering like the smell of decay while she ate, slept, walked. 

“Jesus, Scully,” she hears him utter, and the sight of him cradling his jaw causes her to flex her fingers then curls them back into a fist. The suggestion that he would desert her, leave her behind as nothing more than an afterthought, is one that she has tried to bury the deepest, smothering it with memories from Before as quickly as it resurfaces. It’s a spark of a possibility she’s refused to consider even during the darkest of nights when her thoughts were barely her own.

But as she stands face to face with him, completely submerged in this moment of truth, that spark burns to life within her, raging like the molten underbelly of a volcano. 

“That’s one hell of a hello,” he says while dabbing his fingers at his bottom lip, checking for blood.

She pushes past him into the room, shedding her jacket and dropping it at the foot of his bed along with her backpack, ignoring the fact that the dingy motel room that is surprisingly well furnished smells like him. A table full of burning candles sits next to a sloppily made bed, and a bookcase stands against the back wall, stocked with various canned goods and bottled water. She feels her face flush as his woodsy scent surrounds her, her blood pressure rising as the familiarity threatens to intoxicate her. She’s vaguely aware of Mulder shutting and locking the door before she spins on her heels, her fury spewing from her mouth. “You left me!”

His eyes widen and he shakes his head once. “I- what? Scully, I didn’t-”

“You said you were coming back, Mulder. That night when you left, you said you were coming back!”

“I tried, Scully-” he yells, then stops and rubs his jaw. “Christ, you still have one hell of a right hook.”

“I waited for you!” she screams as she crosses towards him, then shoves him backwards. She doesn’t give him time to recover, instead closing the distance and getting into his face. “When everyone was dying all around me, when I had to run for my life, I stayed as close to D.C. as I could, Mulder. I was so naive, so sure you would return.”

He deflates at her words, his hand dropping from his face and his shoulders slumping. “Scully-”

“They called me a fool, told me I was crazy for thinking you could have survived, but I waited for weeks, months, because I was positive that they were wrong. I kept telling myself that Mulder wouldn’t ditch me, not indefinitely. He loves me. Yes, he can be a selfish sonofabitch, but he isn’t that selfish.” She feels a surge of adrenaline when Mulder flinches at the laugh that escapes her mouth, and she continues. “Imagine my surprise when you finally proved me wrong.”

“But I did look for you,” he insists.

“That’s complete bullshit, Mulder,” she spits, then inhales sharply to keep her chin from quivering. She turns from him and begins to pace. “It’s nice to know that at least that hasn’t changed. The world itself is unrecognizable, but you’re still uttering bullshit like your paycheck depends on it.”

“Scully, come on, that’s not fair.”

“Not fair?” she yells, her voice rising an octave. She can feel him staring at her, and it fuels her, pushing her to cross and recross her original path through his small room. “Mulder, what isn’t fair is that I waited along the new coast until I couldn’t wait anymore. I stopped at every settlement that I came across, but you weren’t there. You were never there. But that didn’t stop me, oh no. I kept going, continued searching for my partner, the partner that went to the ends of the world to find me. Where did he go, Mulder-”

“I’m still here-”

“-and I did my best to keep to myself and just survive, but that didn’t stop the occasional man from-”

She stops pacing at Mulder’s sharp inhale, and holds her hand up when he steps towards her with a look of horror on his face. “Don’t you dare, Mulder.”

“Scully, please-”

“Don’t you dare touch me.”

“I won’t,” he says quickly as he holds his hands up in the air in surrender. “Just please tell me they didn’t…I need to know that they didn’t force you.”

Her eyes narrow, and she then recoils at the look that crosses his face. Where she expects to see pity, or even resignation, is an emotion that she isn’t anticipating: concern. It extinguishes the blaze of anger that consumes her, snuffing her will to fight into a billowy cloud of exhaustion. She drops to the edge of the bed and lowers her face into her hands. “Of course not,” she says through her fingers. 

“Oh, thank god.”

She hears the sandpapery scratching of his hands rubbing against the stubble on his face, then feels the mattress dip next to her. All of this time, she thinks. “Mulder, where were you?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper. 

“Well,” he starts, his voice equally as quiet, “I arrived here about three or four weeks ago, Spencer before that, Plover before that…”

“No, Mulder, what I mean is…” She pulls her hands from her face and looks at him, allowing herself to really see him for the first time since she’s arrived. His hair is too long, the ends grazing the place at his temple where his stubble begins, and peeking out from the drooping neck of his shirt she can see the dip along his collarbone. He’s lost weight, much like the rest of the survivors of the After, angling his facial features more severely. The corner of his jaw is starting to purple beneath his five o’clock shadow and swell. She fights the urge to reach out and touch it. “Where did you go?”

He locks his gaze with hers, and a look of understanding passes between the two of them.

“I went that night to meet my informant. By the time I arrived at the parking garage in Charlottesville, I realized too late that I’d been tailed. I was barely out of my car when I was hit from behind.” He reaches around to the back of his head, rubbing at the memory of an angry knot from two years prior. She watches as he then leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “The next few hours are a bit of a blur. I remember the back of a panel van, driving, and Patsy Cline.”

“Patsy Cline,” she repeats slowly.

He nods. “Walking After Midnight. Both times I’d regained consciousness that song was playing. I can still hear it every time I close my eyes. It was the last song I heard before…” He pauses and a piece of hair grazes his eyebrow when he turns to look at her, his hazel eyes soft under the candlelight. “It was all a misunderstanding, Scully. I was under the impression they set up the meet to give me information, but they thought I had information that was worth the charge of kidnapping a federal agent. I think they had planned to hold me, to beat it out of me if I didn’t talk, but then…then it happened.”

Scully nods, but doesn’t say anything.

“When I said I would be back in a few hours, I truly believed it,” he says finally. “I had no way of knowing-”

“I understand.” And she does, but it does little to alleviate the heaviness in her heart.

“I didn’t abandon you.”

“You didn’t find me,” she counters.

“Scully, I looked. I went north into New York-”

“New York? Why on earth would you travel to New York?”

“I remembered you had a great aunt that lived upstate,” he replies, the simplicity of his words punctuated with a slight shrug. “It doesn’t make much sense now, but I guess I just assumed that if you had to run, maybe that’s where you would go. But you weren’t there.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Nobody was there.“ He pauses and even with the few inches between them, Scully feels his shudder, both haunted by the ghosts of their experiences. “By the time I got to what was supposed to be New York, it had been… decimated. From there I continued on to cross through Canada figuring you would head west…”

His voice fades to a low murmur as she considers his route. He’d gone north, she stayed south. Together, it would appear that they had traveled parallel routes, possibly navigating through the same states at the same time, unaware that the other was just miles away. And yet somehow, they both managed to find themselves in Small Town, Iowa. 

Of course, she thinks. In all the time she’d known him, in the novel of their lives, they always been on the same page, even when it felt as if they were chapters apart. She shakes the ache of her anger from her hand, and dips her head to hide her cheeks, now pink with embarrassment. 

“…stopped when I couldn’t continue walking, and stayed here since. It wasn’t the plan, but the roof is intact and the bed isn’t too lumpy. Hey, Scully, you still with me?”

“Oh, Mulder, I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” 

She smiles sadly, and his eyes close as she runs the tips of her fingers down his jaw, leaning into her touch as she cups his face. Such a simple act of caring, one they’d shared many times before.

“Scully, how did you find me?”

“I asked the right people the right questions.”

“Do I need to have words with this these people?”

Scully raises her eyebrow, and Mulder’s runs his fingertips from the lump on her forehead to the bruising that lines each side of her neck. Bobby. She’d almost forgotten…

“I’m fine,” she says, and forces herself to not pull away.

“Well, at least that hasn’t changed,” he says with a smirk.

Scully begins to argue, but is interrupted by exhaustion. She covers her mouth as she yawns. Mulder eases off the bed and takes his place at her feet.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“When I confessed that I had fantasies of you wearing footwear to to bed,” he explains as he unlaces her boots, “hiking boots weren’t exactly what I had in mind.”

She chuckles and allows him to pull them from her feet, then closes her eyes as his thumbs make long strokes along her arches, rubbing away the tension.

“You’re tired,” he says simply.

The mattress squeaks as she lays back, the soft cotton blanket and the warmth of his hands eliciting a hum of contentment from somewhere deep in her chest. “Can’t sleep now, Mulder. Still have s’much-” she yawns again “-to talk about.”

She groans at the loss of his touch when he climbs to his feet and crosses behind her to pull down the covers.

“Mulder.”

“There will be plenty of time to talk when we wake up,” he says as he fluffs the two meager pillows. “We’re both exhausted.” He must catch her eyes flicking to the door, because he adds, “Don’t worry, Scully. You’re safe here.”

Her eyes linger on the door for a moment longer. When society had fallen, it dragged the right of security down with it. Safety, a sensation she had once ignorantly taken for granted, has become a privilege given only to those with the more efficient weapon and the stronger will to live, oftentimes coming down to simple chance. You live or you die. Heads or tails, like the flip of a coin. The idea of true safety feels foreign to her, like so many things in the After. She rolls to her hands and knees, and crawls into bed.

Mulder climbs in behind her, tentatively scooching closer until she can feel his body heat along the length of her back. When she doesn’t object, he molds himself to her, wrapping his arms around her just as he had done Before. For the brief moment before she sleep overcomes her, it is almost as if nothing has changed.


	7. Chapter 7

_“Come on, Mulder, pick up, pick up, pick up,” she utters into the phone before she’s sent to voicemail again. “Mulder, it’s me. Again. You said you’d be gone a few hours, but it’s now… 8:27am. Call me back.”_

_She punches the ‘END’ button with a frustrated sigh, crosses to the living room window, and pushes the curtain aside. It’s a quiet Sunday morning, the street below void of the bumper-to-bumper traffic that will inhabit it the following morning, when the birds chirping will be drowned out by the impatient screaming of horns. Puffy clouds hover lazily throughout the sky, traveling at a glacial pace as the sun shines brightly across the rooftops of the buildings. Scully’s eyes focus on a streak of grey that mars the otherwise pristine canvas of the sky, as if an had artist jerked their brush to the side out of frustration, their paint then bleeding orange and her windows rattle as a sudden *pop* resonates across her apartment._

_“Oh my God,” she whispers and she swears she can feel a sudden rush of heat radiating through her window. She jumps, nearly dropping her phone as its ring wails from the palm of her hand._

_“Mulder? Oh my god, Mulder, did you see–”_

_“Agent Scully?”_

_“Assistant Director?” she asks._

_“Agent Scully, are you with Agent Mulder?”_

_“No sir, I’m not, but I believe I just witnessed an explosion-”_

_“Are you able to reach him?”_

_“I’m not, but, sir,” she replies more firmly, “Homeland Security needs to be notified immediately.” She hears what sounds like shuffling through the phone and a door closing. “I just saw- well, I’m not sure what-”_

_“Scully, listen to me,” Skinner says with a firm voice. “I don’t have time to explain, but you need to get out of the city. I’ll continue to try and reach Mulder-”_

_“What’s going on? Is this regarding the-”_

_“Drive west, Scully. Do you hear me? I’ll try to find you. ”Hurry, leave now-” and the phone beeps, alerting her to the lost signal. She lifts her phone into the air and waves it around, before dropping it to the couch and turning on the tv._

_“-be sure to keep you updated as more reports come in about the fire in the sky,” the newscaster says. His smooth voice lends to his unperturbed demeanor, exuding calmness as if he were reporting the morning traffic. “Just moments ago Ari Fleischer released a statement on behalf of the President stating there is no need for concern.”_

_A caramel glow filters throughout Scully’s apartment, casting a warm sheen across the walls and her furnishings. Her brows furrow as she watches her living room shift, darkening to a burnt orange before gradually intensifying to a bright cherry._

_“-with speculation at an all time high. Was it a bird? A plane?” The newscaster snickers at the teleprompted joke as Scully walks to the window and looks curiously at the world outside._

_“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” she whispers and places her hand tentatively against the glass. The clouds have disappeared, deflated by the hue that seeps across the skyline as if the heavens had lost the war between good and evil, left to hemorrhage over the world before fading to black with its demise. “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.”_

_“This just in,” she hears the newscaster say. “We are getting reports of a high magnitude earthquake in-” and the screen fills with snow, the speakers emitting the crunch of static. A shiver runs down Scully’s spine as a low rumble vibrates beneath her feet, and she gasps. ___

__Mulder’s arms squeeze around her waist as she jerks awake, reminiscent of Before when she would wake in the middle of the night from another nightmare, and his arms offered her the security she needed to fall back asleep. This morning, however, she untangles herself from him, and eases herself from the bed at her bladders urging._ _

__“There’s a bucket in the bathroom,” he says, his voice still thick with sleep. “I’ll dump it after you’re done.”_ _

__“I can take care of it,” she whispers._ _

__Mulder yawns and rolls into her now vacant space, stealing her pillow for a spooning companion. “Mkay. I’ll keep your spot warm ‘til you get back.”_ _

__Scully smiles to herself and pads to the bathroom. The grime and mold that she anticipates are surprisingly absent, the bright yellow walls and white bathtub appearing clean and freshly scrubbed. Where the toilet should be sits an orange five gallon bucket, a meager but considerate stack of napkins placed next to it._ _

__She hovers, balancing on the balls of her feet and does her business, then tip-toes through the hotel room with the bucket in hand. Mulder snores lightly as she slips on her boots and jacket, and she allows herself one last longing glance at him before stepping outside to discard her urine._ _

__The Wash falls steadily around her, rinsing the bucket with a continuous pitter-patter, and she tucks her hair beneath her hood. A line of trees crinkle the morning horizon just beyond the water that surrounds the motel, their trunks fading grey with the slow process of death, vulnerable in their nudity to the elements, and Scully pulls her jacket tighter around her chest._ _

__Behind her he waits. Him, knotted around her heart, pulling at her. With each breath, look, touch, he begs her to stay. But the muscles in her feet twitch at the journey before her, urging her to answer the summoning of the northwest. Staring out into the bleakness of the After, she finds herself again caught in the middle, unsure of which path to take._ _

__Stay or go._ _

__Stay or go, Scully?_ _

__With an exasperated sigh, she grabs the bucket and chucks its contents across the gravel, watching as it disappears immediately. She turns and enters the motel room._ _

__“What time is it?” he asks as she closes the door behind her._ _

__She can’t help but smirk. He’s innocent in the mornings, temporarily free from the shackles that chain him to his past, and she’s forgotten until now. Her frustration dissolves to a puddle on the floor, like the jacket she sheds, as he groans through the stretch of his arms. His hair spikes in all directions as if it were attempting to escape his scalp. “We’re late,” she says feigning urgency. “We were supposed to be in a meeting with Skinner an hour ago.”_ _

__“Oh, shit,” he utters and jumps out from beneath the blanket, still wearing the jeans and t-shirt from the night before. But reality sinks in as he gets to his feet, and he drops to the edge of the bed with a laugh. “Wait a minute…”_ _

__“I had you.”_ _

__He laughs again and shakes his head. “No you didn’t.”_ _

__“Oh, I did,” she says as she steps towards him. “I had you big time.”_ _

__Mulder grips her hips and pulls her close, nuzzling his face into her belly. Scully runs her fingers through his hair, raking her nails across his scalp. How is she supposed to choose? she wonders as she feels his hum vibrate against her belly._ _

__“I’ve missed this,” she hears him mumble as his fingers trail along her backside to the curve of her lower back._ _

__How is she supposed to walk away from him?_ _

__“Mulder, we need to talk-”_ _

__“I’ve missed you. Us,” he says as he twists her sweater into his fingers, balling it into his fists. He lifts it a few inches and plants his lips just below her bellybutton. She gasps as his tongue swirls across her skin, licking to life a warmth she hasn’t felt in so long. The scratch of his facial hair tickles as his chin nudges the waist of her jeans, sending that warmth directly between her legs, and her breathing falls shallow._ _

__“God, Scully,” he whispers. He groans when he grips her ass and she feels her knees weaken when he squeezes. “God, I missed us.”_ _

__Her nipples harden almost painfully as he loosens his grip and dances his fingers to the back of her thighs, then tugs her legs apart. In one fluid movement she’s straddling him, face to face, and his hands are up the back of her sweater. His palms are hot against her skin, searing the space between her shoulder blades, and she holds tight to the back of his neck as her back arches under his touch._ _

__He’s hard beneath her, his erection straining beneath his jeans, and she rocks her hips once, tentatively grinding against him. Her lips form into an O as she recognizes the feeling of pleasure that surges through her, and her body instantly begins to plead for more. She feels the digging of his fingers into her upper thighs, flexing and releasing, urging her to continue._ _

__The groan he emits when she complies feeds into her growing desire, and suddenly she’s ravenous. With every rock of her hips, her body pleads for more and Christ, she hasn’t felt like this since a few months ago when her dreamy subconscious decided to grace her with one of their last nights together. His teeth nip at the sensitive skin below her ear, triggering another swivel of her pelvis._ _

__Together they work into a steady rhythm, with him lifting his hips to meet each of her forward thrusts, her clipped moans slipping up an octave as she throbs behind her wet panties._ _

__“Scu-lly,” he pants, and she looks at him from beneath her heavy eyelids, suddenly pierced by the golden flecks of his hazel eyes. The hunger in his gaze, the confidence in his touch, his musky scent. The familiarity of it all washes over her. She watches as his tongue darts out, swiping across his lower lip, and she’s never wanted to kiss him more than she does right now. It feels like seven years of sexual tension rolled into one moment._ _

__The sharp sound of a slamming door bangs in the distance, and she freezes._ _

__“Don’t stop,” Mulder groans and thrusts against her again._ _

__Scully grimaces at the sound of glass shattering, followed by another slam._ _

__“Did you hear that?” Mulder asks._ _

__“They found me,” she says through a gasp._ _

__“Who?”_ _

__“Red!” they hear a male voice yell._ _

__Scully looks to Mulder, wide-eyed. “And they’re close,” she whispers._ _

__“Red,” the voice yells again. “You here? We just wanna talk.”_ _

__“Shit,” she utters then removes herself from Mulder’s grasp and scrambles to her feet. She ignores his weak protest of ‘hey’ as her heart beats firmly in her chest, and she hurries to gather her things. She should have known they would look for her, trekking all the way across town through the Wash. Vengeance is a powerful motivator. She is tying her bootlaces when she notices that Mulder is still sitting on the bed. “Get dressed, Mulder.”_ _

__“Scully, who-”_ _

__“Please, just trust me. Get dressed, we have to go-”_ _

__“Red!”_ _

__“-right now. I’ll explain later.”_ _

__Mulder stands, adjusting himself, and quickly pulls on his boots and jacket. He and Scully grab a handful of canned goods, and stuff them into their backpacks, along with a few bottles of water. “Can I get the quick version?”_ _

__“Is there a back way out of here?” Scully asks._ _

__The door to the neighboring room is kicked in, and Mulder holds his finger over his lips. Silently, he leads Scully past the bathroom to the back wall. He pulls aside a blanket that has been nailed along the upper molding to reveal a window. Scully’s backpack is tossed outside, landing with a *thwick* in the mud, followed by Mulder’s._ _

__Scully steps into his hands and lifts herself, hoisting a leg through the window._ _

__“Scully?” Mulder whispers._ _

__Scully sighs and pauses, straddled on the windowsill, and turns to him. “Bobby from the Hampton. I may have stabbed him.”_ _

__“May have?”_ _

__She lurches her body out of the motel room and slings their bags over her shoulders. “Fine, I did. A few times,” she adds. “Now, quit stalling, we gotta go.”_ _

__Mulder hurries out the window, and immediately shudders as the cold hits him. It slices through his jacket and thick layers, sinking deep into his bones and joints._ _

__“Mulder,” Scully hisses._ _

__He catches the backpack that is thrown at him, and they sprint._ _


	8. Chapter 8

The mud squishes like a sponge beneath their feet, expelling brownish-grey muck as they scurry along the back of the motel. There will be no way to hide their tracks, Scully thinks as their boots pull from the mud with a *pop*, like the smack of a kiss. They need to move quickly, put as much distance between them and Bobby’s boys as possible.

Their feet slide to a stop when they come to the edge of the moat. The ten foot wide body of water puckers under the Wash with ecru ripples colliding into each other, the chaos of the surface creating a milky film along the shoreline.

Mulder whistles. “Looks pretty deep. Want me to carry you-” he begins to offer, but she pushes past him. The water splashes around her boots, up to her knees as she trudges deeper, her backpack held above her head once it circles her waist.

The numbness in her legs spreads to her chest as she propels herself forward, even the smallest cells in her body recoiling at the frigid water, and she breathes through her nose to keep it from getting in her mouth. 

“Come on, Mulder,” she tosses over her shoulder through gritted teeth. She hears the splashing and feels the rush of his waves against her back as he follows, and she works quickly to lead him to the other side.

“We need to change into dry clothing,” Mulder says as they step up onto the shoreline. “We’re at risk of hypothermia.”

Scully positions her backpack on her shoulders, grabs his hand, and pulls him towards the treeline. “Right now, they’re a greater risk.”

Their feet squish in their wet boots as they race into the woodland, and Scully cringes at the thought of the blisters that are sure to line their heels in by sundown. Her chest burns with the strain to control her breathing as she and Mulder zig-zag through the trees, ducking under fallen branches, occasionally looking behind them to ensure they aren’t being followed. Fueled by the need to survive, they run. The woods grow more dense the further they go, their stoic grey and white surroundings blurring into what resembles a modern, busy printed wallpaper.

Mulder grips Scully’s forearm and tugs gently, slowing their pace. He points ahead of them to a small group of branches hanging over a fallen tree.

“We should keep going,” she insists.

“I think we lost ‘em.”

After a quick glance behind them and seeing no activity, she nods. “I think you’re right.”

Scully removes her jacket and drapes it across the top of the brush creating a temporary shelter, then crawls in next to Mulder. They huddle together and she’s thankful for the warmth of another body, knowing it won’t be long before her body temperature and heart rate returns to normal, and she’s cold again.

“That was smart thinking,” Mulder says.

“What was?”

He points to her jacket above them. “Blocking out the Wash. I think my toes are starting to prune.”

She sniffles in response and wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve. She reaches into her backpack and pulls out what remains of the crackers, handing Mulder a few.

“So, Bobby,” he says before putting one in his mouth.

“We had a…” Scully pauses, chewing slowly while she takes her time to consider her answer. “A misunderstanding.” 

“In regards to what?”

“He thought he deserved an extra payment since I decided to leave early,” she says. “And he was wrong.”

Mulder cringes. “That man’s a bully.”

The disgust in his voice isn’t lost on her, and neither is his matter-of-fact tone. He knows Bobby. She knows she shouldn’t be surprised at the confirmation, she heard the rumors, was made painfully aware that he was a frequent visitor to the Hampton. But the affirmation does nothing to salve the splinters that crack the edges of her heart at knowing the rumors are true. “You know him,” Scully states.

“I do.”

“How well?” she asks slowly.

“How well do I know Bobby?”

Scully tips her head to the side. Her brain’s weak begging for her to not continue is subdued by the strength of her heart’s urging and desperate need to know. “You’ve been in town for a few weeks. I’m sure you’ve met-” she pauses as she searches for the right wording, not brave enough to give away the true subject of her questioning. Becky. “Made certain acquaintances. How well would you say you know them?”

The crease between his eyebrows disappears as her implication registers. He shifts beside her, and then drops his eyes to his lap. He clears his throat. “Not very well at all.”

“Did you spend a lot of time with them?” she asks carefully, focusing intensely on her thumbnail that picks the salt from the cracker.

“No,” he replies. “We are, um, practically strangers, really.”

“Strangers,” she repeats.

“I know how it must look, but please believe me, Scully, it was never like that. I- we didn’t…” His voice trails off and he sighs.

Images of him with that woman flicker in her mind, glimpses of snapshots created by the camera of her imagination. She sees his fingers dig into the small of her back as he pulls her closer, her breasts pressing against his chest. She sees the smile on the womans face as he drags his lips beneath her ear, her eyes closing as his tongue flicks the skin of her earlobe. She sees the woman sigh and grip his shirt for dear life, so sure that she will combust beneath the fire of his touch. 

Scully shakes her head. She wants to believe him.

“Ok,” she whispers.

He turns to her and grasps her hand, relief on his face. “Ok?”

She *needs* to believe him.

“I believe you,” she says with a smile.

“It’s just us, Scully. Me and you against-” He gestures to the rain that falls outside of their temporary shelter. “This.”

“The Wash,” she provides.

“Someone needs to let Nostradamus know that his calculations were a little off,” Mulder says with a chuckle. “I always thought it was going to be an alien invasion, or maybe a solar flare that took us down. None of the work we did on The X Files could prepare us for an act of…” His voice trails off.

“Man.”

“I was going to say God.”

Scully shakes her head. “This wasn’t God, or even Mother Nature, Mulder.”

“It sounds like you have a theory, Agent Scully,” he says. “Care to share with the class?”

“Weather engineering.” Mulder’s head tilts back as he laughs, and Scully grimaces. “You don’t believe me.”

“You know, Scully, I expected you to have changed after two years, but-”

“But what, Mulder?”

“I never expected for the tables to turn, for us to switch roles.”

Scully chuffs, and twists the sleeve of the few remaining crackers, then stuffs them back into her backpack. “And I never expected you of all people to be completely blind to what is really going on, but here we are.”

Mulder purses his lips, suddenly serious. “Then explain to me what I’m not seeing,” he says.

“HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Program, was established in 1993. An ionospheric research program funded by the US Air Force under the facade of analyzing the ionosphere and investigating the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance.”

“In Alaska, I remember. They created the Ionospheric Research Instrument,” he says.

“The IRI. A high-power frequency transmitter which was used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere. The goal was to better understand the physics of the ionosphere, but that was a lie. It was all a front, Mulder.” She pulls her journal from her backpack and flips a few pages. “What they were really doing was nothing short of abhorrent. Instead of gathering data for research, the satellite sent high frequency radio waves back into our atmosphere, altering the weather.”

“For what purpose?” Mulder asks.

She stares at him for a moment, unable to believe that he even has to ask. “Control,” she replies finally. “Using the weather to control the human population. Wreaking havoc with natural disasters, from droughts to floods, earthquakes to super cell storms that produce tornadoes.”

“Scully, weather modification as warfare was banned by the United Nations.”

“And when has that stopped any of them?” She asks. She flips to the next page in her journal and holds it up for him to see. “Project Cirrus, 1947. The first attempt to modify a hurricane by the US Air Force, Army Signal Corps, and the Office of Naval Research. Operation Popeye, clouds seeded to prolong the monsoon in Vietnam. South Africa in 1997, seeding storms in an effort to increase rainfall to enhance crop production. It’s been going on for years, Mulder, under the guise of human welfare. This is just what we knew of, what was made public. Did you even read your own file?”

“I did, but the claims were completely unsubstantiated, Scully. Outlandish claims that didn’t offer even the smallest glimmer of proof, which is why it was never investigated.”

“You’re wrong,” she says. “It may have appeared unsupported, but we just didn’t have all of the supporting information as we do now, and didn’t know how to look at the pieces to make a complete puzzle. Like they say, hindsight is 20/20,” she mumbles as she flips through her journal. “Two years ago, that same satellite took a direct hit by a stray asteroid that charged into our atmosphere, then proceeded to send out a signal, setting those catastrophic events into motion.”

She finds the page she has been looking for and holds it up for Mulder to see, pointing at a list with her index finger. “First an intense heat, the atmospheric temperature rising ten degrees fahrenheit in just a matter of seconds. That heat penetrated the earth’s surface almost immediately, resulting in an instability of the tectonic plates. This led to the earthquakes, which led to the monstrous tsunamis that wiped out the coasts.”

“But what about the rain?”

Scully closes the journal and sighs. “The satellite taking direct impact must have caused a glitch in the system, triggering constant precipitation.”

Mulder pulls his knees closer to his chest and rests his elbows atop of them. He runs his fingers through his hair, and says, “If we still had the internet, those conspiracy nuts would be going crazy for you.”

Scully tucks her journal back into her backpack and hums in response.

“So, what do we do with this knowledge?”

Scully chews her lower lip as she zips her backpack closed.

“Scully?”

“There was an address listed in one of the printouts in the file,” she says quietly, keeping her eyes as low as her voice. “Winnipeg, Manitoba. I can’t remember it entirely, but I believe it to be the most recent location of the center of control for the weather manipulation program.”

She turns to Mulder to find him staring at her incredulously, and she smiles. “I think I can stop it, Mulder. All of this.”

He opens his mouth to speak, and her jaw clenches in preparation for an argument or an onslaught of questions, but he returns her smile instead. “Then I guess we had better get moving.”

“Mulder, you don’t have to-”

“I want to,” he says as he pulls his jacket over his shoulders. “I lost you once, Scully, I’m not about to make the same mistake twice.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note: this chapter is rated R for nudity.

Conversation has given way for silence over the hours they’ve walked. The sky curls and rolls above them, the violet clouds growling with power as they churn, preparing to unleash their fury at any moment.

“Hey, you see that?” Mulder asks, pointing.

The cabin stands sturdy beneath the Wash but is a small blip in the remoteness that surrounds it. The sight of it tamps down on the exhaustion that aches Scully’s joints, and she nods. “It’ll work.”

Mulder jogs ahead of her to inspect the dwelling, disappearing around the back as Scully comes to the front door. She grips the door knob and twists.

“Shit,” she utters under her breath. She twists the knob again, then thrusts her shoulder into the door, but it doesn’t budge. “Mulder, it’s locked.”

She takes a step back when the door jerks open before her, and Mulder stands in the doorway, grinning.

“Back door wasn’t.” He steps aside and gestures for her to cross the threshold. “Welcome to Chateau au Sculder,” he says as she enters the cabin. “Our quaint two room cottage offers a sense of intimacy with nature, minimally furnished with a single chair and table for the ultimate off-the-grid experience.”

“Sculder?” she asks with a grimace, then adds, “I’m sure we’ll enjoy our stay.” 

She shrugs out of her jacket, and drops it on the chair. Her damp hair hangs heavily atop her shoulders, and she rakes her fingers against her scalp and gives it a shake, sending droplets of water to fling every which way.

“There’s a wood burning stove in the corner,” he says. “And I found some firewood out back.”

“Is it dry?”

“We’re about to find out,” he replies before he exits out the back door, only to reemerge moments later with an arm full of chopped wood.

Scully rummages through her backpack, then drops her last box of matches on the table. By the time she has their jackets hung over the two square windows, Mulder has a fire going and the cabin is full to the brim with the type of cozy warmth that feels like slipping on a fuzzy bathrobe after a hot bath. But outside the clouds have finally broken, their concrete grey splintering and shattering with each clap of thunder, pelting the roof with their frozen shards.

She finds herself wondering if they have crossed state lines as she removes the sweater she wears over her tank top and spreads it across the floor. The roughly seven hundred mile trip will take them weeks on foot, both of them toeing the line of danger with each settlement they pass through, and dodging any outlaw groups in between. They could be injured. They might not survive the journey at all. She’s surprised to find herself wondering if their safety is worth the trip. When it was only her life on the line it wasn’t even a question, but now…

Now she has Mulder to take into consideration as well.

Like a shadow, Mulder moves about the room, rearranging the scarce furniture as Scully sits on the floor, lost in thought as she removes her boots. She doesn’t notice him searching the contents of her backpack as she slips the wet socks from her feet, humming as the warmth caresses the tips of her toes.

“Hey, Scully, come over here for a minute.”

She glances over to see him standing next to the fire burning stove and the chair positioned in front of him. Her eyebrow rises.

“Trust me,” he says, then gestures to the chair. “Come on.”

The floorboards feel warm under her bare feet as she crosses the floor, and takes the seat. His touch is nearly weightless when he first places his hands on her shoulders, and she sighs when she feels him finally tighten his grip. Her chin falls to her chest as the pads of his thumbs press into the muscles between her shoulder blades then drag the pressure upwards.

“Now tip your head back, and close your eyes.”

“No,” she says and leans back into his hands.

“Scully.” His smile is as warm as the heat that radiates from the stove. “Trust me,” he repeats.

After a moment she relents, and gasps as the warm water cascades from her forehead to the nape of her neck. His hand cups the back of her head as he pours another cup of water over her hair, encouraging her to relax as the heat uncoils the tight grip of the cold.

She smells the shampoo before she feels the suds in her hair.

“When did you go through my bag?” she mumbles.

The smirk on her face disappears as he gently scrubs along the hairline of her forehead and temples. He shushes her with his fingers as they work to the the crown of her head, applying subtle pressure in a continuous circular motion. She feels the muscles in her face and neck slacken, relinquishing tension that lay deep within her that she wasn’t aware she was holding, softening beneath his strong but delicate touch.

The fire pops in the stove beside her, emitting short bursts of heat that rush over her damp skin and the thick scent of smoldering wood that mixes with the flowery shampoo. Somewhere in the distance she hears a roll of thunder, but she doesn’t allow herself to worry about the angry Wash, instead focusing on the feeling of him scrubbing its fury from her hair.

She feels another cup of water spill over her tresses, and its warmth sneak down her spine like thief in the night, kissing each vertebrae upon its descent before spreading into her arms and legs. Mulder shifts his hands so that the weight of her head lay in his palm, and she groans as his fingers work the thick lather to the back of her hair.

“Feel good?” he asks, and she hums in response.

His fingertips scrub at her scalp, then slip south to massage the taut muscles along the back of her neck; rubbing out the knots, kneading the length of them. She rides out the high as endorphins flood through her, her breaths deepening with each deep stroke of his fingers. Instinctively, she tips her head forward, allowing him access to the knots that swell along her cervical spine. Suds drip down her temples and cheeks, and like a child, she squeezes her eyes shut.

He lightly grips her jaw and tilts her head back with a chuckle. “Still gotta rinse,” he says, and again she feels the water rush through her hair. Cup after cup, it streams to the floor like a waterfall, splattering across the wood beneath their feet. She feels the pulling at her scalp as he squeezes down the length of her hair, ringing the excess water.

His voice is barely a whisper when he says, “Stand up.”

Tipsy from imbibing on the analgesic effect of endorphins, she sways as she eases herself to her feet. His hands are unshakeable when they grip her waist, steadying her until she offers him a satiated smile. His eyes hold her gaze as his tongue darts out to moisten his lower lip, and she feels his fingers curl under her tank top and quiver against the skin of her abdomen, a twitch that asks for permission. 

She lifts her arms above her head and allows him to inch her tank top up her torso, before pulling it over her head and laying it across the back of the chair. His eyes trail from her face to her chest, their hazel color darkening as she stands topless before him, igniting the spark of desire in her belly.

“Scully…”

She’s surprised to hear the astonishment in the way he says her name, as if it is the first time he’s seen her so vulnerable. Her breathing quickens when he reaches out to touch her, his fingertips grazing just below her left breast. He moves slowly when he steps around her, his hand never lifting from her skin, trailing lightly around her ribcage until he stands behind her. She feels him part her hair and a shiver rush down her back when he presses his lips to the nape of her neck.

“How is it that you haven’t changed?” she hears him ask. Her nipples pucker as he runs a finger down the length of her spine, and she allows her eyes to close as his warm hands spread across her hips. The cotton of his shirt feels like silk against her back as she leans into him, and his arms encircle her waist. “It’s been so long, and everything is different,” he says as he unbuttons her pants. “Everything but you.”

She feels her pants slide down her legs and collect at her ankles. It takes minimal effort for her to untangle her feet and kick the clothing aside.

“You’re my constant, Scully,” he says over the faint sound of splashing water. “I shouldn’t have expected anything else.”

She gasps when she feels the rush of warm water racing from her shoulders to her feet. “Mulder, what are you doing?”

“We trudged through a highly questionable body of water and have been running all day,” he replies simply.

She turns to see his hands rubbing the shampoo into a lather, and she raises her eyebrow. “You’re bathing me?”

He smiles. “If you’ll let me.”

“Why do I feel as if this is fulfilling one of your many fantasies, Mulder?”

“Is that a ‘yes’?”

She sighs and has barely nodded in agreement when his hands are on her shoulders, working in a slow circular motion to spread the soap across her upper back. “But what about you?”

“What about me?” he asks mindlessly, concentrating on slathering the soap down her arms.

She turns to face him and takes the hem of his shirt between her fingers. “Take your clothes off, Mulder.”

A glimmer of excitement flashes in his eyes before he yanks the t-shirt over his head and tosses it to the floor, his pants meeting the same discarded fate. Scully reaches around him to pull a cup of water from the pot then pours it gingerly down his chest, watching as it streams over the ripples of his abdomen like a shallow lazy river over stones that have been smoothed over time. He watches her every move, fascinated, as she spreads the shampoo across his chest, her fingers catching slightly under the curve of his pectoral muscles. Finally his hands begin to mirror hers, gliding up and down the other’s limbs and swirling around belly buttons.

She can’t remember the last time she was touched this way, with strength, knowing that she isn’t fragile enough to break but also with a tenderness that can only be born from love. Was it like this the first time they had made love? she wonders. The last time? His hands have covered every inch of her, caressing each curve and plane of her body like a sculptor molding his masterpiece.

The gasp that hitches in his throat is sharp in the quiet cabin when she pulls him against her, her breasts slipping easily against his chest, slick with shampoo. Her hands move expertly as she memorizes the newness of a body she had once thought she knew so well, the more rigid muscles that line his upper arms from hours of chopping firewood, and the deeper curve just above his ass. She finds her fingertips dancing along his left shoulder blade, seemingly searching of their own volition for the puckered scar of a gunshot wound.

“Scully,” he whispers, and a smile tweaks the corners of her mouth at the feeling of his hardness against her abdomen. Even Before when they faced seemingly insurmountable difficulties, when they were at their worst, this had always come easy for them.

A shallow wrinkle forms between his brows as his fingers skim along her clavicle, then swoop down to cup her breast. Her back arches at the sensation of his thumb grazing across her nipple, thrusting her breast into the palm of his hand, desperate to remember exactly the way this feels in case-

She inhales sharply as water courses down her chest, tickling her belly and thighs as it streams to the floor. He pours cup after cup over the two of them, rinsing the suds that coat their skin, and she grips the sides of his waist. Her eyes close as she leans forward, breathing him in, feeling his heart beat beneath her lips. 

After a moment, she feels his touch at her chin, then her head tilted upwards. She opens her eyes to find him staring back at her with a look of questioning, uncertainty. Her heart hammers beneath her sternum with the ferocity of a jailed prisoner banging for his freedom, each thrum reverberating down her abdomen and beating like a drum between her legs.

“Kiss me, Mulder.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note: This chapter is NC-17 / Explicit.

The tension that’s developing between them grows dark, heavy like a placid lake before a storm, and she finds herself wanting to throw pebbles into it to see what kind of ripples they would make. The air sparks with the electric current of desire, sending a buzzing sensation across her skin.

“Kiss me,” she demands again, her voice replaced with a whisper as she throws in the first pebble.

His mouth finds hers with such force that it rocks her back to her heels, but his hands at her waist pull her back to him. She’s instantly overwhelmed, forgetting to breathe once she feels his hands everywhere on her body, his tongue swiping the roof of her mouth, the bumping of his legs against hers as they stumble towards the wall. The ache between her legs swells when he takes her bottom lip between his teeth, tugging gently before plunging his tongue back into her mouth and claiming it as his own.

The wall behind her scratches at the skin of her shoulder blades, and she inhales sharply through her nose at the biting pain mixing with the sweetness of pleasure. Her hands take on a mind of their own, and she’s unable to stop them from roaming across his skin, gripping his hair, pulling him closer. The ripples of this placid lake have consumed her, and she can’t stop, doesn’t want to.

Every fiber of her being screams for him, pleading hungrily for more as his hand inches down her belly. Between her legs swirls with anticipation as his fingertips dance around her belly button, her breaths falling shallow as they waltz further south before finally cresting her pubic bone. He moans with her as two of his fingers circle once around her opening, then begin to slide into her, slowly. 

She pulls herself to her tiptoes, allowing him to push his fingers deep within her, until he is cupping her mons in the palm of his hand. Tiny crescent moons mar the smooth skin along his upper back as her hips rock in time with his maneuvering, her fingernails digging into his shoulders as the heel of his hand grinds into her clitoris upon each penetration. With each thrust and curl of his fingers he draws her closer to the edge, and she breathes rapidly through the O of her lips. Short bursts of pleasure ripple up her abdomen from between her legs, and it’s happening so quickly. It’s too easy. It’s been so long.

His face blurs under her eyelashes that flutter against her cheekbones as he rests his forehead against hers. The gyrating of her hips against his hand, each sharp inhale through a tightened chest. Her knees buckle as she falls head first into her climax, his fingers coaxing her through each wave.

The gasp that he releases is clipped when she grips his arms and spins him, then pushes him to the floor. He watches with wide eyes as she drops to her knees, straddling him. His mouth opens, she supposes to utter her name, but when she grabs ahold of his cock, all that comes out is a deep, guttural moan. In the remnants of her post-orgasmic haze, she feels him grip the fleshy part of her thighs as her own hands work the length of him, and time seems to slow as she begins stroking him from base to tip, memorizing the feel of him beneath her fingers again.

The moment hangs in the air between them, and regardless of how hard she tries, she’s unable to remember the last time they were this vulnerable, the last time she touched him this way. In the time that has passed, so much of Before has faded into disjointed fragments, making it difficult to discern fantasy from memory, fiction from fact. Was it on the couch in his apartment? In her bed? She feels her brows furrow as she searches the furthest reaches of her memory.

“Scully.”

The whispered sound of her name erases the lines between her brows almost instantly. They’re here now. With her free hand, she grips the back of his neck and lifts herself to tower over him, locking eyes with his as she guides him to her entrance. His face mirrors her own, she’s sure, as she lowers herself without hesitation: eyes wide with the sudden remembering of how this feels, jaw slacken with awe. His grip tightens on her thighs when she has fully descended, encouraging her to remain still, but she rises, then descends again slowly. The pace she sets is unhurried, as if they have all of the time in the world. She wants to feel every inch of him, over and over again, while vowing to commit every moment of the sensation to memory.

“Christ, Scully.” His voice is hoarse, strained. “I’m not gonna-” he pauses to hiss as she descends again, then rotates her hips. “Last long,” he finishes.

She lifts herself and lowers once more, then drops her head back as she swivels her hips forward. Through heavy lids, she stares at the ceiling as he clutches her hips, thrusting himself into her as deep as he’s able. Her abdomen rolls as she grinds back and forth, his cock brushing against her g-spot again and again with each rotation of her hips.

Under her fingertips she feels a low hum resonate across his chest, and his hands roam over her, like a sculptor creating his latest vision, molding his muse. He leans forward and presses his mouth to her neck, and she gasps when his tongue flicks the sensitive skin just above her collarbone. Her chest begins to tighten, and she releases a moan that vibrates her sinuses. 

She picks up the pace and grinds against him harder, leaning forward a little further so that her clit brushes against his pubic bone. She feels his fingers snake into the back of her hair, and he gently tugs her head to the side. His teeth scrape against her earlobe before she hears him say, “Come for me.”

She moans and his grip on her hair tightens.

“Again, Scully. Come again.”

And she does with his name ripping from her throat. She feels the curled ends of her hair brush the center of her back as she arches, barely registering the feeling of him growing harder inside of her, pulsating, her orgasm pulling him over the edge with her. In the furthest expanse of her climax, beyond the sound of the rushing blood echoing in her ears, her name tumbles from his lips, like a sacred utterance to a higher being.

It feels like forever has passed by the time she leans forward, their chests heaving as she rests her forehead against his. His arms wrap around her middle, and he eases them onto the towel that had been discarded earlier as simple as an afterthought. The heat of the fire radiates over their naked bodies, sending gooseflesh across their rapidly cooling skin. With his index finger he traces the lines of her face as she stares at him, awestruck by the softening of his features under the glowing flames, the beauty that he is forever unaware that he possesses. His nose, his lips, his jawline.

“These last two years, Scully…” he says, his voice breaking the silence, but it trails off.

She closes her eyes and nods, knowing everything he could be thinking, knowing every way that he could have finished that sentence. So much has happened, she thinks. So much has changed. In this world that is so drastically different, she finds comfort in the fact that there is still something between them that has remained the same. Something recognizable.

“How have you been?” he asks.

She chuffs then turns her face away. “Mulder.”

“I want to know,” he says quietly, then gently pulls her face towards his. His eyes bore into hers as if he’s searching for an answer that he doesn’t believe she’s going to give; an emotionally honest one. “How have you really been, Scully?”

Her blue eyes narrow as she ponders her reply. “I’ve been…” she starts, but then pauses. “Terrified,” she replies finally.

She watches as his eyebrows twitch with surprise, then his face quickly sobers. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She sighs through her nose and chews her bottom lip, considering her next words. He wants the truth, she’ll give him the truth. “The things I’ve seen- the things I’ve done, Mulder…” She closes her eyes again and watches as the more prominent events from the last two years replay like one of Mulder’s slideshows behind her eyelids. Glimpses of turmoil, flashes of death.

He brushes an errant strand of hair from her forehead and tucks it behind her ear, silently waiting for her to continue.

“About a year ago I passed through this small town in West Virginia. The survivors there were were barely making it day to day following a bout of influenza. They lost so many people, Mulder. Children and elderly, anyone easily susceptible.” Mulder nods in understanding. “By the time I had arrived, the high school gymnasium turned infirmary had nearly emptied out, full of empty beds that had belonged to their sick loved ones.

“There was this woman there, sleeping on a cot in the back- Grandma Vic. She was one of the few that remained.They said she had fallen ill just a few days earlier, and I can still hear her moaning from the ache that the fever brought. She tried so hard to be strong, to put on a brave face for them. Her shivers…she was so frail, yet she shivered with such force that the cot squeaked.” Scully turns away and focuses her eyes on the front door, trying to keep the tears from falling. She can still see the woman’s white hair splayed across the pillow with a damp towel on her forehead, fear glistening in her eyes as she clutched the blanket around her body. After a deep, shuddering sigh, Scully clears her throat. “I don’t know why, but I couldn’t leave. I stayed by her side, caring for her, attempting to keep her as comfortable as possible. The medication- what little they were able to obtain- barely took the edge off of her symptoms. Her hand was still hot to the touch as I held it when she took her last breath.”

“I’m sure she appreciated your compassion,” Mulder says.

“The bottles of Vitamin D in my backpack- she gave them to me before she passed away. Her way of saying thank you.”

A gentle smile spreads across Mulders face. “That was very kind of her.”

“I don’t deserve them, Mulder. As I watched her life slip away, I swore that I would be the woman she saw in me, not let this world affect me, change me anymore than it already had-” Her voice breaks and she wipes away the single tear that breaks free of her lashes. “But I fear that I’ve grown more reckless. The innocent people that I’ve seen die and didn’t help, the lives that I’ve taken…”

“Scully-”

“Thirteen, Mulder. In the last two years I’ve killed thirteen people.”

“And I’m sure you had no choice,” he replies quickly, as if his mind were made up before she’d even confessed.

Scully is taken aback at his simple response. Had she had a choice? “I suppose I didn’t, or at least that’s what I continue to tell myself,” she says. “Mulder how did we get here? How did we go from saving lives to taking them?”

He leans over her and presses his lips to the tip of her nose. “We’re survivors.”

“But at what cost?”

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change, Scully.”

Scully covers her mouth with her hand, hiding the smirk. “Stephen Hawking.”

“Wise man, wise words.” He presses a kiss to her forehead. “You have always been the strongest, most intelligent woman I know. That didn’t change- deep down *you* didn’t change.”

Scully wraps her arms around his neck, and he doesn’t resist when she pulls him to her. His lips are gentle on hers, his touch feather-light against her skin as if his fingertips were painting the words of a sonnet on the most delicate of fabric.

Maybe they could stay here for a while, she thinks. Maybe they could create some semblance of a life together in this tiny cabin.


	11. Chapter 11

When she wakes, the first thing she notices is the silence. Gone is the roaring thunder and the whipping of rain against the walls of the cabin. Beyond the soft snoring that ruffles the back of her hair and the occasional crisp pop emanating from the wood burning stove is a profound quiet.

Mulder rolls to his back, taking the towel with him, as she climbs to her feet, then pulls her sweater over her head. The floorboards don’t whine beneath her weight as she crosses to the door, but she tiptoes anyway. A dry chill bites at the skin of her legs and the apples of her cheeks when she cracks open the door.

As far as she is able to see, tiny white flurries float down from the sky, replacing the usual morning drizzle. They coat the ground in a freckled white, as if God had sprinkled the land with powdered sugar, stirring occasionally under the gentle breeze. Outside, the Wash appears peaceful, nearly serene. 

The idea of shutting the door and locking out the rest of the After whispers through her consciousness, and it almost seems too easy. The cabin is in a remote area that offers isolation, and it doesn’t appear that anyone else is staking claim on it, so why couldn’t it be theirs? she thinks.

Her eyes graze across the landscape to a thicket of trees, and in her mind she sees Mulder wiping sweat from his brow, chunks of wood in a pile next to him and an axe resting against his leg. In place of the snow are fallen leaves, rich with color and the scent of earth, but the day is unusually warm. If she strains she can hear the water boiling in the pot on the stove behind her, the rolling bubbles signaling that dinner would soon be ready. A warm breeze flitters through her dress, sending cotton ripples across her shins and thighs. Her brows furrow as she leans into the door jam, listening to the repetitive thwack of Mulder’s axe, struggling to determine the feeling that floods through her. The muscles along his bare back flex and relax with each swing, the blade slicing with ease through the wood, sending the quartered halves cascading to the ground. He makes it appear easy, living in the wild, living a life of sustenance.

*Thwack*

He makes this life home.

*Thwack*

Content, she realizes a moment later and her eyebrows rise. She feels… happy. Mulder turns to her then and smiles widely, his skin glistening under the autumn sun as he waves. His mouth moves as he yells something to her, but all is silent.

The sun doesn’t shine in the After.

“S’cold, Scully,” she hears croaked from behind her. The deep desire to stay, to claim this place as their own still swells within her, and she gulps in the frigid air to restrict the impulse, then promptly closes the door.

“It’s snowing.”

Mulder groans and rolls closer to the stove. She eases down next to him, running her fingers through his hair as she relishes in the last few minutes of warmth.

“We should get going, Mulder,” she says. “We have a long journey ahead of us, and the snow is going to slow us down.”

“Five more minutes.”

She smiles.

Five minutes eventually passes to ten, she’s sure. If she owned a watch, she would probably see the minute hand ticking past the ten minute mark, but she continues to stroke his hair, lightly raking her nails against his scalp. When he turns to lock eyes with her, she can see the question glimmering in the golden specks.

Why don’t we stay?

“I’ll pack the bags,” she says. “You get dressed.”

She hums in response when he tells her that they aren’t prepared for a long trek in the winter weather, nodding in agreement when he suggests they search a more populated area for warmer clothing. The snowfall will surely slow them down, the exhaustion of the journey will set in earlier. She turns to pass him a smile of reassurance as they step out from the warm, welcoming cabin and into the brisk chill, but the smile fades quickly. “Oh my God.”

“I know, I can already feel the cold numbing my teeth.”

“No, Mulder,” she says, gripping his jacket and pointing to the front of the cabin. “Look.”

A streak of black paint mars the wood facade just under the window, the drips along the bottom frozen midstream before ever reaching the ground. The edges are jagged, familiar. No goods, no wood, she remembers reading on the sign at the Hampton Inn. No trade, no maid, scrawled in black paint. No pay, no play. The streak is a message, she’s certain, a threat left in haste for her some hours earlier. They found them.

Mulder crouches and runs his fingers through the center of it, then shows her his clean hand. “It’s dry. Wasn’t it there when we arrived last night?”

“No, it wasn’t there,” she replies as she looks over the area around them. The falling snow has covered any tracks that could have been left, concealing any indication of where the culprits could have gone. Could be hiding. Waiting.

“It was completely dark by the time-”

“It wasn’t there,” she repeats sternly, then grabs his hand and pulls him away from the cabin. The snow crunches under their feet as she picks up the pace, dragging him along, her toes stinging as the cold seeps through the leather of her boots. “We need to leave.”

“It’s probably just some assholes pissed that we found the shelter before-”

“The black paint, the *way* it was painted, Mulder. I’m positive it was-” she squeezes his hand. “A vehicle,” Scully says as she passes a glance back at the cabin, then lowers her voice. “We need a car or a truck, anything that will help us move quicker. We need to put as much distance between them and us as possible.”

“Scully, relax, we’re miles away. What happened back there between you and Bobby was just a business deal gone bad. He might be a bastard, but he knows when to cut his losses. There’s no way he would send his goons this far.”

“A business deal that turned personal when I stabbed him, Mulder,” she reminds him.

Mulder considers this for a moment, then nods. “Touche.”

“You think I’m being paranoid,” she says in a huff, tucking her chin to her chest. Her eyes focus on her boots barreling through the few inches of snow.

“Takes one to know one, isn’t that what they say?” he replies, a step behind her.

“I’ve dealt with his kind before, Mulder. This isn’t over. Far from it.”

“I hope you’re wrong.”

She hopes so, too, but deep down she’s positive she isn’t. In the span of her life, she’s known many men like Bobby, experienced the havoc their egos wreak on others’ lives. From the asshole jock from high school named Michael to the narcissism of CSM, those who remained of the Syndicate to the ex-tweaker from Ohio that followed her for fifteen miles and attacked her behind the soggy remnants of a Burger King. She’s at least been caught in the crossfire of their single-minded obsessions, and at the worst of times, the direct center of it. Bobby from Hampton Inn is no different.

The wooded area comes to an abrupt ending, opening into a clearing, and their gasps are swallowed by the glistening expanse that spreads before them. Snow covered hills roll as far as they’re able to see, lazy in their swoops and dips, exaggerating the vastness of the landscape. The pristine white continues for miles, a blunt contrast to yesterdays muted greyish-brown, as if the world has finally been forgiven of its sinful ways and the canvas is being wiped clean.

She feels his fingers in the palm of her hand, then lace within her own.

“It’s brighter with the snow,” she hears Mulder muse. “Almost makes you think it’s sunny.”

“It’s the reflective fragments inside the structure of the snowflakes, reflecting light from the clouds, essentially offering the illusion of sun,” she says, then pauses, then adds, “You’ll need to start taking the vitamins I have.” She brushes off the annoyance she feels at not realizing this sooner.

“Nah,” he replies. “You’ll blow through your stash in half the time.”

“Your immune system is probably already compromised, Mulder.”

He laughs, then begins to lead her into the clearing, tugging at her hand. “I’m healthy as a horse.”

“I’ve seen what the lack of vitamin D can do, even to an otherwise healthy person,” Scully says pulling him back to her. “The settlements I’ve passed through have been overwhelmed with illness. A few days in one of them could have you bedridden.”

“Okay,” he replies quickly. His eyebrows rise as he inches forward and smiles in surrender. “Okay. I’ll take the vitamins.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” he agrees before kissing her forehead. She leans into his touch, his lips cool against her skin, before he breaks the contact and again leads her into the clearing. 

The snow falls gently from the sky around them, sticking to their hair and lashes. Together they walk, hand in hand, with a calmness settling between the two of them. 

“A few months ago,” Mulder says, “I stumbled into a settlement further north. It must have been a new establishment. There was no organization; everyone and everything was everywhere. Complete chaos. Anyway, I was pushing through in a hurry because I’d wanted to make another few miles before sundown, and this kid hops out in front of me. I almost tripped over him, it happened so quickly. Couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, with tears streaming down his face.”

Scully concentrates on the sound of his voice, the low, slow hum of it as he weaves his story through the muffled sound of their footfall. A vague memory of late night stakeouts and him relaying statistics and stories from the basement peaks in the back of her mind, his voice the melody to the falling rains rhythmic beat. The two had intermingled for the perfect surveillance lullaby. She finds it’s the same now, but with their footsteps instead of rain, and she’s happy to realize this hasn’t changed.

“He was a scrawny little thing, all knees and elbows. I squatted down, getting down to his level, and asked him what was wrong. He told me that he had lost his parents. Couldn’t find them anywhere. I wasn’t surprised, given the chaos. We must have searched for hours. We visited every tent, searched every building, we yelled their names in the middle of the crowd.”

When he pauses, Scully squeezes his hand, urging him to continue. “What happened? Did you find them?”

“We did,” he replies with a genuine smile, that toothy grin he wears when he knows he’s done something right. “Turns out they were at the edge of the settlement searching for him. It was really…” he shrugs. “I don’t know, Scully. To be able to reunite the lost boy with his parents and see the look on their faces. So pure, their relief so uncomplicated regardless of the turmoil they were surrounded by. It gave me hope.”

Scully feels a smile spread across her face, less genuine than the one he still wears, more bittersweet. She’s long wondered if she would be given the chance to feel that pure happiness again upon being reunited with a loved one from Before. With the exception of Mulder, there was little hope of being reunited with her family or colleagues, knowing the chances of their surviving the the earthquakes and tsunamis were slim at best.

Her chest tightens with sudden longing to hear her mother’s voice, to hug her brother Bill. She aches just to know that they survived and are somewhere safe. A useless feeling, she tells herself, and slows her breathing until the strain in her chest subsides to a dull irritation. She’ll never know their outcome, it’s the truth that she is able to understand but has yet to accept, stabbing her in her sternum like the strike of an unsharpened blade, and she silently chastises herself for not coming to terms with that yet.

Ahead of them, the chalky treeline is sullied by a prick of red, a bruise on the otherwise immaculate facade. Scully is unable to take her eyes from it, her sight straining until it comes into focus. A red pickup truck sits parked next to a white dwelling, a farmhouse blending with ease into the landscape around it.

She tips her head up to look over the property for any evidence of traffic, but everything remains still under the falling snow, like a moment captured in the plastic confines of a snowglobe.

Mulder says nothing before hurrying towards the truck, then slows to a cautious walk as he circles around it. The drivers side door releases a resounding squeal as it’s opened, it’s high pitch slicing through the quiet. Scully shudders at the noise, her heart rate quickening, and she glances around to see if anyone has been alerted to their presence.

“It has keys!” she hears Mulder hollar, and within moments the trucks engine roars to life. “And gas!”

She rolls her eyes, stifling the laugh that she feels at the back of her throat. If the sound of the door hasn’t alerted anyone within a few mile radius, his yelling surely has. Another thing that hasn’t changed; discretion was never one of his strong suits.

As she slides into the passenger seat of torn leather, she wants to warn him that this feels like a trap. It’s too easy. But the words disappear with the click of her seat belt, and they lurch into drive. Within moments, the farmhouse fades in the rear view mirror and the colorless world rushes by at forty miles an hour.


	12. Chapter 12

“You know what I miss?” Mulder asks.

The truck weaves around the stalled vehicles that litter I-29 North; cars, trucks, and SUVs of multiple makes and models sit haphazardly along the way, with even the most expensive exteriors riddled with spots of rust and shattered windows, further proof that the After doesn’t discriminate. They have become fixtures along the roadways, giving the impression of permanence. Mulder guides the truck by a discarded Toyota Corolla, its once bright red frame perched atop flat and rotting tires, his maneuver narrowly missing the metal post of a road sign.

Outside the passenger window, trees begin to zip by so quickly that if she allows her eyes to lose focus, the sight before her becomes a misty blur of static. Somewhere out there the sun is setting, bleeding an electric blue tint across the puffs of snow that line the otherwise bare branches. The view pulls a memory to the front of her mind, a time when her father was on leave, packed their family into the station wagon, and drove them to Big Bear for a long weekend.

She remembers her brothers whispering stories in the far back, and Melissa chattering endlessly next to her, while her own jaw was clenched, tormenting herself with the thought of being eaten alive by a family of gigantic black bears. Her stomach ached and her palms were moist as their destination grew closer, and she couldn’t understand why her parents would subject their children to such danger. She couldn’t find the courage to ask.

That fear was quickly forgotten once the lake came into view, and her father pointed out the snow that lined the edges of the surrounding mountains. While her siblings squealed with the excitement of sledding and snowmen, she had been rendered speechless at the beautiful sight before her. It was then that she fell in love with snow, the visual cleanliness it brought with it.

Mulder shifts in his seat then passes a glance at her, a wordless cue telling her that she’s taking too long to respond. Off the top of her head, she’s able to think of a few things that he misses, and she doesn’t take her eyes from the passenger window when she replies, “Tell me.”

“Granditos,” he says, not missing a beat.

His answer surprises her, prompting her to turn and look at him. “The gas station burrito?”

He nods. “Bean and cheese wrapped tightly in a tortilla wrap, microwaved into a delicious, slightly radioactive concoction.”

“That sounds-”

“Delicious,” he finishes for her, ignoring her grimace. “What about you?”

“I can’t say that my digestive tract has ever been graced with a Grandito.”

“No,” he says with a laugh. “What do you miss? There’s gotta be something.”

“Bee pollen.”

He doesn’t even try to hide his cringe. “And you thought a Grandito was bad?”

“Pot roast and mashed potatoes,” she amends with a chuckle, then adds, “And your spaghetti. The veggie pizza from that place around the corner from your apartment.”

Mulder closes his eyes for a moment and hums. “With a side of that three cheese bread that you said was going to send me to my grave early, and an ice cold Shiner Bock.”

“Cheesecake with blueberries for desert,” Scully says.

A growl sounds deep from Mulders belly, and he groans. “I’m suddenly starving.”

Scully pulls her backpack into her lap, then proceeds to fish around the contents until she pulls out what’s left of a package of trail mix and hands it to him.

“In light of our current discussion,” he says before he dumps half of the contents into his mouth. “This pales in comparison.”

Without taking his eyes from the road, he passes the package to Scully, and she pours the remains into her palm.

“I don’t want to excite you too much,” she says after she swallows a few raisins, “but there’s some albacore tuna in there for a late dinner.”

He chuckles. “Even canned tuna is better than your veggie pizza.”

“Hey-”

“Seriously, how did you find that even remotely enjoyable?”

Ignoring him and hiding her smirk, Scully shakes out a vitamin D tablet from the bottle, and slides it into the palm of his hand. “Take that,” she says, then rests a bottle of water against his thigh.

The tension of an impending squabble knots the muscles of her shoulders, but when he doesn’t argue she relaxes into the worn leather seat. They fall back into a comfortable silence as the world passes by, the truck humming with life as they travel down the long, dead road. After a few minutes Mulder reaches for Scully’s hand, and she lets him take it, holding it atop his thigh.

The fact that this moment is reminiscent to their life Before isn’t lost on her, a scene they’ve played out beat for beat many times before. Traveling down empty highways with only the headlights to light the way, their destination an undetermined amount of miles ahead, her hand tucked tightly within his. If she would allow herself the luxury, she could pretend that it is a seedy motel with questionable linens that awaits them at the end of the line.

“If we don’t find someplace to stay for the night soon, I’ll drive for a while,” she offers. “Give you a break.”

“I think we’re about to enter city limits.”

She smiles at his response. He never took her up on it Before, either.

“But thank you,” he adds, and she hums in response.

When the city of Brookings finally comes into view, Mulder decides to exit the highway as early as possible, and the truck crawls up the off ramp. The side streets are empty, save for the few inches of snow that have collected and curve up curbs, stretching across the front yards of vacant houses.

The bleak appearance of abandonment is familiar as they drive through the outskirts of the city, with dilapidated buildings and unused street lamps bordering each route. It doesn’t matter which state they drive through, each city that resides there resembles one before it. A wooden sign stands bluntly at the edge of the road, Meadowbrook, and Mulder turns onto the narrow street that leads into a subdivision. 

There is little variation to each ranch style home that sits nestled in this frozen corner of suburbia, each dwelling appears to be vacant but in surprisingly good condition. The further they drive, the more disappointment Scully feels at the lack of Christmas decorations. The weather brings a faux sense of holiday spirit, even with Christmas months away and hardly celebrated these days. But as Mulder pulls down a street called Prairie Lane, the lack of twinkling lights and decorated evergreens positioned in the center of the picture windows still draws a sigh from her.

“Honey, we’re home,” Mulder says as he pulls into a driveway, and turns off the ignition.

Scully peers through the windshield. “Why this one?”

“Why not?”

Scully shrugs. It’s as good a reason as any, she supposes. Just as she reaches down to pull her knife from her boot, Mulder hops out of the truck and hurries up the sidewalk.

“Mulder!”

By the time she’s slams the passenger door, he has already opened the front door and disappeared into the darkness of the house. She clenches her knife in her and hand follows his footprints up the walkway, cautiously stepping over the threshold, listening for any sign of a disturbance. Footsteps fall heavily somewhere off to her left, and she cocks her head back, focusing on their direction.

They’re moving towards her.

Slowly, she side-steps through the foyer, easing her ass along the table that sits against the wall. The footfall grows louder, and her heart beats strongly in her chest as she holds her knife out in front of her, her fingernails digging into the palm of her hand. By the sound of it, they’re just a few feet away. Any second and they’ll-

“Hey, Scully- woah!”

She jumps and pulls her knife back. “Jesus, Mulder!”

“Easy, it’s clear,” he says while holding his hands in the air.

“You have to stop doing that!” she yells as she spins on her heels and hurries to close the front door.

“Doing what?”

“Running nose first into the unknown,” she replies, pushing past him, then adds, “Into danger. That may have been something you deemed acceptable Before, but you can’t do that now. It’s careless, Mulder! You’ll get yourself killed.”

“You’re right-”

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the world isn’t like it used to be. It isn’t safe!” Scully throws her coat on the couch, and anger burns every step she takes when crosses back to Mulder. “We don’t have guns on our hips, and it isn’t as simple as shoot first, fill out the incident report later.”

“Christ, I get it!” Mulder says through clenched teeth, trying to contain his own anger, and turns away from her.

She follows, circling him like a tiger stalking her prey, and plants herself directly in his path. “I don’t know how you managed to stay alive this long, Mulder,” she continues. “It’s a fucking miracle. Hallelujah! Saving kids, traipsing across the north. How did you survive, Mulder?! ”

“Hey!” he yells back, inches from her face. “I said you were right!”

Scully thrusts her hands into his chest and pushes him back a step. “And who the hell is Becky?”


	13. Chapter 13

Mulder’s eyes widen at the sudden subject change, at the mention of the name. 

“Who is she to you?” Scully spits. Anger surges through her veins, sending a tingling sensation across her skin. Her head swims, intoxicated with rage, but she’s hyper-focused.

He shakes his head, she assumes to wipe the look of confusion off of his face. It doesn’t work. “How-”

“How did I know about her?” Scully asks.

“Is *that* what all of this is about?” he asks as his hand gestures between them. “This is about another woman?”

“This is about you, Mulder,” she says. “Were you even going to tell me?”

“Christ, Scully.” Mulder takes another step back and shakes his head. “She was- she’s isn’t anyone.”

Scully rolls her eyes and laughs. “Oh, don’t give me that. Word at the tavern was you two were quite friendly.”

“I slept with her-”

“I know!” Scully yells.

“Once!” he screams back. He turns and slams his hand into the wall, then hangs his head and takes a deep breath, forcing calmness into his voice. “I slept with her *one time* out of loneliness. Each time I saw her after that we just talked.”

Scully’s chest heaves with adrenaline as her eyes narrow at him, searching the side of his face for honesty. His eyes soften when they finally meet hers.

“I’m telling you the truth. Please, Scully, please believe me. I needed…” he pauses and runs his hands over his face. “I hadn’t seen you in over a year, I had no idea if you had even made it. I just needed a human connection, I’m sorry. I’ve been sorry for it every day that has followed.”

The fight that fueled Scully runs low, closing in on empty, and her shoulders sag. Can she fault him for satisfying that need? She wasn’t even there. Scully sighs a shaky breath and leans back into the wall. “What did you talk about?” she asks, unsure of what else to say.

From the corner of her eye she sees Mulder shrug. “A little bit of everything,” he says. “We talked about our lives Before, I shared a few stories, some of our old cases.”

“Which ones?” she asks, but as the words leave her mouth she realizes she doesn’t care. She can justify the reasoning behind his actions, but she doesn’t need the dirty details.

“Flukeman and Eugene Tooms. She said she didn’t want to know any more about our cases once I told her a quick version of the events that surrounded the Peacock family.” He chuckles. “I forget that chasing monsters isn’t everyone’s version of just another day at work.”

“Not exactly the most appropriate dinner discussion,” she responds quietly, hoping this is the end of the conversation.

“I guess not.”

“What else?” God, why can’t she stop?

“She gossiped. Talked a little about the other women that she worked with, bitched about the settlement politics.”

Scully cocks her head to the side. “About Bobby?”

“Yeah. From what she told me, he’s a real sonofabitch. Runs his men ragged in search of vitamin D, promising them everything under the sun if they find it. But in reality he’s just a lazy narcissist who refuses to go out and get it himself,” Mulder says with a grimace. Scully feels a twinge of betrayal nagging at the back of her mind. “I never dealt with him myself,” he continues, “just heard about him and his ways.”

“So,” she starts, trying to limit the bitterness in her voice, “when I said that I was worried about them following us…?”

“I hoped you were wrong. I knew there was a chance that you could be right, but-” he pauses. “I don’t know, Scully.”

She purses her lips, then stands and brushes nothing off of her pants.

“Where you going?” he asks.

“I just need a minute,” she replies. “I’m going to- uh, go check the house for some blankets.”

The master bedroom offers her the solace she craves, the closed door shutting everything out so she can take a moment to process their conversation. The room, while musty with the scent of vacancy, is still dry and furnished. A queen-size bed is positioned against the back wall, it’s bedding made with precision as if the owners planned to come home any minute. She sighs as she seats herself on the edge of it, her fingers worrying the hem of her sweater in her lap.

While she’s grateful for his honesty, she can’t shake the sour taste of betrayal that the truth came at the result of a rage filled argument. Did he not trust her with the information? Would he have even told her if she hadn’t confronted him? She squeezes her eyes shut, understanding his need for connection, but the jealousy of someone else touching him overwhelms her, tinged with a sense of ownership.

It doesn’t matter now, she tells herself over and over. He’s here with her now.

The mattress jostles beneath her as she tumbles back, then she immediately turns to her side as a cough wracks through her ribcage. Her chest spasms as she digs her face into the blanket to muffle the sound, her nose running and eyes watering. When the fit finally subsides, she turns to her side and wipes her face with her sleeve.

Across from the bed stands a large cherry oak dresser with a square mirror hanging above it. She rolls herself from the bed and walks to it, her fingers skimming the glassy exterior. Expensive furniture is rare in the After, but expensive furniture that is dry and still intact has become extinct. She runs her fingers around the curved corners, appreciating the detail in the woodwork, admiring the smooth edges. The ornate knobs of the drawers are sturdy, and she pulls each one open to reveal a plethora of clothing left behind. Sweatshirts, pants, and extra socks are tossed onto the bed.

The surface of the dresser is nearly bare, save for a framed photo and a few bottles of perfume. Scully lifts the photo and admires the captured moment of the family of four. A father, mother, sister, and brother all grouped together in what appears to be a meadow. The sun shines brightly over them, and their smiles are wide with happiness. She glances up at her reflection in the mirror and forces a smile. Does she appear happy?

Her smile fades as she rests her weight on her palms and leans forward.

“Dana Scully,” she says, her voice strong, confident. The blue of her eyes is vibrant, crisp. The fine lines across her face have deepened, but her skin is flushed, casting a rosey sheen across her cheeks. “Dana Katherine Scully. Medical doctor and Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Badge number JTTO 331613. Partner, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and-”

“Lover.”

Startled, she turns quickly to see Mulder standing in the doorway, his presence as smooth as the glaze on the oak. He had taken the word right out of her mouth. “How…?”

His eyes brighten when he smiles. “Fire’s roaring. And there’s a can of peaches with your name on it. Found some food in the kitchen.”

“I, um,” she starts, then clears her throat. “I found some clothing, and uh, there’s some blankets on the bed.”

Mulder squeezes her shoulder as he walks past her, then begins tossing pillows to the side.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

Mulder grips the mattress and jerks it upright.“No reason to let this thing go to waste,” he says as he drags it to the doorway. “Don’t forget the pillows.”

She turns back to the mirror once he exits and grabs a bottle of perfume. She spritzes herself and whispers, “and lover” to her reflection, then gathers what she can in her arms and walks out to find Mulder.

—

She tries not to miss the wood burning stove as they huddle closely beneath the blankets, with the warmth produced by the fireplace significantly less than. The wood smells different, sweeter, less pungent. His arms are wrapped around her as she lay next to him, tucked into the crook of his arm, and pillows are scattered all around them.

“This is like a five star hotel,” Mulder says as he snuggles deeper into the bed.

“All we need are a few white fluffy bathrobes and an appointment for a couples massage.”

“And room service.”

She turns her face into his shoulder to yawn, but the breath cinches in her chest and she coughs. “Sorry about that,” she mumbles once she’s able to catch her breath.

“You ok?”

She yawns again. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

“Make sure you take one of those vitamins before you fall asleep.”

She chuckles. “Vitamin D isn’t a cure-all, Mulder.” 

“It’s better than nothing.”

The fire pops in the fireplace and she watches the flames dance under the wind that flows from above. They lick across the logs and swirl together, like two lovers embracing. She pulls Mulder closer. 

“We’re almost there, Scully,” he says. “Only about an eight hours with the truck.”

“Depending on the weather, of course.” 

“If we could find some gas, we could be to Manitoba as early as tomorrow evening.”

Before she can respond, she’s silenced by the sound of footsteps thumping on the porch and shadows that cross the bay window.

Mulder lifts his head to look. “Did you hear-”

“Shh.”

The quietness in the house is interrupted by the sound of the doorknob jiggling and muffled voices. She doesn’t take her eyes from the entryway as she lifts herself from the mattress, watching intently as she rushes to pull her sweater over her head, her ears straining to locate the intruders. Just move on, she thinks. Continue to another house.

To her left Mulder arms himself with a fire poker from the hearth of the fireplace, and she mentally scans the room for weapons. Lamp three steps to her right, hung picture frame behind her, knife tucked in her boot beside the mattress. Time seems to slow as her attention fixates, her shallow breaths beating out the moments until the door is kicked open.

“Well, well, well.” She immediately recognizes the voice as Joe emerges from the foyer and into the subtle light from the fireplace. He still resembles Mulder, even though his features are softened by the orange glow. Two men stand behind him. “Looks like we are interrupting, boys.”

The men laugh, and Scully feels her jaw clench. She should have killed him the first time.

“There’s nothing for you here,” she says. “You need to leave.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that darlin’,” Joe says, his voice as cheerful as the smile on his face.

Scully glances at his sidekicks, noting one has a metal pipe at his side, while the blonde is armed with a rifle. Joe taps the toe of his boot with a metal baseball bat, then points it at Mulder.

“Hey!” he says. “Don’t I know you?”

Mulder doesn’t answer, instead taking a step towards Scully.

“No way, loverboy,” Joe croons, and the blonde tucks his rifle into his shoulder, aiming the barrel at Mulder’s chest. “You’re going to stay right where you are. See, me and Red- we got a score to settle.”

“Yeah, she hurt Bobby,” the blonde adds. 

Joe nods once. “That she did, Henry.”

“I was defending myself,” Scully says. The muscles of her thighs tingle in anticipation to squat, her fingers twitching in preparation to grip her knife.

“Loverboy, we got a classic case of ‘he said, she said.’ Red,” he says pointing his bat at Scully, “says self defense, while Bobby says he was simply going to collect what he was due, and she attacked.”

Scully takes a step towards her knife. “I already paid.”

When Joe walks towards her, his two men spread out. Henry veers to the right, volleying his rifle between Mulder and Scully, and the other crosses towards Mulder, who squares his shoulders.

“You’re in debt,” Joe spits as he closes the distance, but Scully doesn’t move. “And I’ve come to collect.”

“Hey, you need to leave her alone!” Mulder yells.

“You need to step back, son,” Joe yells back without turning to Mulder, screaming in Scully’s face. “Brian!”

The man besides Mulder wastes no time, immediately swinging his metal pipe. Mulder hollars when it connects with the back of his legs, forcing him to his knees. He swings the fire poker wildly in the air but misses, his face twisting into a wince as the pipe meets his side. Mulder crumbles to the ground, gasping for air. 

“No!” Scully screams and turns to leap towards him, but is knocked to side when Joe backhands her, sending her crashing into the lamp before toppling to the ground.

“Henry, check their bags!” Joe orders, and the blonde hurries to set his rifle aside and dump out the contents of their backpacks.

She groans when turns to her side, and she sees Mulder trying to crawl his way towards her, his form glittering from the stars in her eyes. 

“I got some food here,” Henry says, “an empty shampoo container, some kinda book- hey, jackpot!” Scully hears the sound of him shaking the bottles of vitamin D, but she watches Mulder inch closer. “Lookey what we have here!”

“Loverboy!” She hears Joe yell from above her, then hears the whistle from the swing of his bat. Searing pain explodes through Scully’s left hip, and she yelps. “I told you to stay put! I will beat her bloody if you so much as blink.”

Through tear filled eyes, Scully watches as Mulder stands, then launches himself backwards into Brian, thrusting both of them into the wall. Mulder turns and rips a picture from the wall and slams it over Brian’s head. His body and pipe tumble to the ground. She ignores the sickening crack of Brian’s cranium caving under the brute force of his own pipe and grabs her knife from her boot.

The howl Joe releases when her blade sinks into his groin is unlike anything she’s ever heard before. Raw with pain, but primal in it’s anger. His bat falls with a thunk to the floor as he stumbles backwards, hands cradling his crotch, and she hurries to her feet. Adrenaline numbs the worst of the pain in her hip as she stands, then grips the front of his sweatshirt and pulls him close.

“Fucking bitch, you’re dead,” he utters, and he spits in her face, but she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t blink. She stares into his eyes and watches them go wide as she stabs her knife into his throat.

His jaw falls slack with surprise and he sways, his knees giving out as she jerks her blade from his neck, blood spurting with each beat of his heart. She clenches the blade in her palm and allows him to fall to the floor, his bloodied hands struggling to cover the gaping wound in his neck as he curls into the fetal position. 

“Stop!” she hears someone scream. A few feet away Mulder stands with his hands above his head and Henry’s gun pointed at him.

“Don’t shoot!” she yells. “Look at me, Henry, look at me.”

His eyes are wild as they pass from Mulder to her.

“Lower your gun, we aren’t going to hurt you,” she says calmly. “Just lower your gun, it’s going to be ok.”

“You killed them- oh, Joe, oh God, Joe.”

“But not you, you’re alive. We’re all alive, and we aren’t going to hurt you,” she repeats. “Look- Henry? I’m setting down my knife. There you go, it’s on the floor. See? Look at my hands,” she pleads as she holds her hands in the air. “I’m not armed.”

“You fuckers killed my friends- You!” His chest heaves as takes a step towards Mulder, and Mulder takes a step back. “You bashed his head in! Get on your knees, motherfucker!”

“Henry!” she yells as Mulder gingerly drops to his knees, and Henry points the gun at his chest. She limps forward, ignoring Joe’s warm, sticky blood that has pooled under her feet. “He doesn’t have to die- the vitamins! You can have them, they’re yours. Take the vitamins, and let him live.”

“The vitamins won’t bring my friends back!” he screams, then runs his hand through his hair as he looks at Joe curled body, then Brian’s body slumped against the wall. “Oh, God,” he whines. “Oh, God, you killed ‘em.”

“You take those vitamins and get them back to Bobby,” she says quickly, then adds, “Think of the rewards, Henry. He’ll be so proud of you.”

“You’ll live like a king,” Mulder says.

After a few moments, Scully watches as the adrenaline slows in Henry’s body, his breaths deepening as he locks eyes with her. “I want the food, too.”

She nods. “Of course. Take whatever you need, but he lives.”

Henry keeps the gun trained on Mulder as he stuffs what he can into Mulder’s backpack- vitamins, cans of food, a sweatshirt- then slings it on his shoulder. “Now, I’m going out the front door. Don’t you follow me! Either of ya make a move, and I’ll blow your brains out.”

Scully holds her breath as he backs away, releasing it only when she hears the door shut and he disappears into the night.

“Mulder?”

She limps as she hurries to Mulder, her hands inspecting every inch of him. “Oh my God, are you ok? What hurts?” she asks as she lifts his shirt. A softball-sized bruise has already begun to form along his ribcage, the angry purple smearing his side. He hisses when she prods it with her fingertips. 

“Are you ok?” he asks, turning her face to inspect the swelling of her cheekbone. “Scully, your hip- is it ok?”

“I don’t think it’s broken,” she says. “Your ribs on the other hand…”

She wraps her arms around his neck as he pulls her close, hugging her tight. Their hearts beat rapidly in their chest, pounding against each other like dueling drum sets. She squeezes her eyes shut as tears burn her eyes, thankful they’re both alive.

“Thank you,” he whispers into her hair.

It takes a few hours, but at the urging of Scully, they work through their pain and exhaustion to drag the two dead bodies into the kitchen, propping them up in the pantry. She couldn’t look at them any longer. But even with the bodies removed from sight, blood stains the carpet and the wall, a coagulated reminder that tonight they survived.


	14. Chapter 14

Somehow it never crossed her mind that she would be here someday.

The fabric of the gown rubs at her skin like sandpaper, feeling as if it is exfoliating the first and second layer of her sensitive skin. Behind her eyes throbs with the force of nuclear blast after nuclear blast, and she wants so desperately to find a more comfortable position in this hospital bed, but dying sounds more appealing than the sharp ache that follows even the most subtle of movements. She swallows the bile building in the back of her throat, yet another side effect of the chemotherapy.

Deep down she was vaguely aware that her end would find her eventually, but this isn’t what she imagined.

A call light rings faintly somewhere down the hall, it’s methodical ding-ding-ding stabbing at the base of her skull with the strength of a gorilla armed with a butterknife. She turns her head away in an attempt to guard herself from the noise, then gasps. The sensation floods her body with the ferocity of first kiss excitement, but instead of the rush of lust, it’s the creeping, bone-deep ache of impending death.

She didn’t anticipate death being this painful.

“Scully.”

The sound of his voice is distant but bright like the beacon of a lighthouse, guiding her through the rough sea of her terminal cancer, bringing her home.

“Scully.”

“I’m here, Mulder,” she says through gritted teeth. “I’m still here.” 

“Scully, wake up.”

A groan gurgles in the back of her throat as she opens her eyes, disappointed that the discomfort from her dream has followed her into her waking. Mulder kneels, hovering over her, brushing the hair from her face.

“It’s freezing in here,” she says and pulls the blankets to her chin.

He leans down and presses his lips to her forehead. “You’re warm. I think you might have a fever.”

“I’m fine,” she says as she squeezes her eyes shut and nudges him away. “I’m just tired. And cold- did the fire go out?” She shivers. “Throw more wood on the fire.”

“The fire’s still going,” she hears him respond, then feels the loss of his presence for only a moment before a sudden weight settles next to her, signaling his return. “Come on,” he says gently. “Let’s get you dressed in some warm clothing.”

She pulls the blanket over her head, huddling further into the cocoon of warmth her body has created.

“Check it out, I even found you a clean sweatshirt in the master bedroom.” When his lame attempt at bribery falls flat, he tugs at the blanket, but she holds it in place, balled in her fists. “Scully, we really need to get going. The snow finally let up a bit, and we need to get on the road while we still can.”

With a huff, she shoves the blanket aside and grabs the sweatshirt, quickly pulling it over her head before her teeth start to chatter. Mulder gathers what is left of their belongings and packs her backpack as she takes her time getting dressed. She turns her back to him, trying to hide her exhaustion. The fabric of her pants skim over the swollen bruise that blemishes her hip, and she hisses, wincing.

“You ok?” he asks.

“Yes.”

She isn’t sure when Mulder snuck out to start the truck, but warm air is blasting out of the vents by the time he’s helping her into the passenger seat. He barely grimaces as he lifts her into the seat, hiding the sharp pain he’s surely feeling in his ribs, but he cradles his side as they back out of the driveway and head back through the winding roads of the subdivision.

Snowflakes fall heavily outside of the truck, sticking to every surface that they land upon, whining and grating under the truck’s tires. In just the few minutes it had taken them to get out and on the road, the weather picked up into whiteout conditions,and Mulder curses as they fishtail onto the main road. Scully leans forward and peers through the swipes of the windshield wipers, squinting her eyes in an attempt to find any indication of the edges of the pavement. Heat from the defrost rushes in her face, the warmth heavenly on her skin, and she sniffles.

She feels Mulder’s sideways glance, but ignores it, turning her face to the passenger window to dab at her nose with the sleeve of her jacket. Her sickness has wedged its way between the two of them like a third passenger that has no respect for boundaries, stretching out in the vacant space, taking up too much room. There’s no reason for discussion, she tells herself. There’s nothing to be done about it; cold medicine and antibiotics are a luxury of Before. She pulls her jacket tighter around her chest and burrows into it, staring out the window as the world passes by at thirty miles per hour, her eyelids growing heavier the further they drive.

Within moments her consciousness lingers in that fuzzy place between awake and asleep, and somewhere beyond the lullaby of the humming engine and the rushing frigid wind she thinks she hears snippets of a familiar song.

I see the bad moon rising.  
I see trouble on the way.  
I see earthquakes and lightnin’.  
I see bad times today.

She doesn’t remember the last time she heard a radio play anything other than static. A chill burns across her skin and if she had the energy, she would whimper.

Don’t go around tonight,  
Well, it’s bound to take your life.  
There’s a bad moon on the rise.

The quality of the melody sounds off, as if Creedence Clearwater Revival were playing while three sheets to the wind in a tin covered shed. But the guitar continues to strum the chords, and the band, off-key, carries on with their warning of the nearing end.

I hear hurricanes ablowing.  
I know the end is coming soon.  
I fear rivers overflowing.  
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

She hisses as she rests the side of her face against the cool window, praying the coolness will numb the headache she wears like a crown.

Hope you got your things together.  
Hope you are quite prepared to die.  
Looks like we’re in for nasty weather.  
One eye is taken for an eye.

The metallic sounding melody fades as the shadows of sleep overcome her.

—

Baby powder, Johnson and Johnson shampoo, and antiseptic. Beeping monitors, muffled footsteps, and shallow breaths. Two tiny hands, ten toes, and dark blonde hair.

They say that in times of extreme emotion, people tend to have lapses in memory. But as she looks upon her sleeping daughter tucked into the pediatric hospital bed, she is absolutely positive she will remember every moment, every detail. Her barren womb aches as she’s drawn to the side of the bed, her heart splintering as she brushes the hair from her daughter’s face.

Button nose like her Aunt Melissa, her grandmother’s bone structure, Great-Aunt Dorothy’s chin. Mr. Potato Head, coloring books, a gold cross necklace. An experiment, a mistake, a miracle.

Emily wakes. The jagged cracks in Scully’s heart spread when they lock eyes, and a shard breaks free leaving behind a gaping hole.

“I’m so sorry,” Scully whispers. “Forgive me.”

“What?” Mulder asks.

Scully wakes, blinking away the remnants of sleep and takes in the sound of his voice, the brightness of the snow, the subtle jostling of the truck as it ambles down the road. Emily’s eyes haunt her even after she becomes more alert, their grey foreboding like the skies of the Wash.

Mulder throws the truck into park, and she asks, “Why are we stopping?”

He leans forward into the steering wheel and rubs his sleeve across the windshield, clearing the bit of condensation that had collected. His eyes narrow as he stares for a moment, then settles back in his seat with a satisfied nod.

“Mulder, where are we?”

“What used to be a Sunoco, I think,” he replies as he pulls his jacket on. “I’m just going to run inside, see if there is anything we can salvage.”

“We should just keep going,” she insists.

“I’ll only be a minute,” he says and flashes her a quick smile before exiting the truck. A gust of wind rushes through the cab before he closes the door, and Scully hisses as goosepimples ripple across her skin. She watches as he trudges through the foot of snow, his figure shrinking until finally vanishing into the darkness that lay behind what was once the door to the gas station.

Her eyelids grow heavy as she repeatedly sweeps her gaze back and forth across the landscape, surveying the area for incoming danger, and her stomach flutters with what she’s determined could be either nervous energy or hunger. Hoping it’s the latter, she nudges the backpack with her foot, trying to recall what little food they may have left. She had watched Henry stuff most, if not all, of their canned goods into Mulder’s backpack. No food, no vitamins, and she’s fallen ill in the beginning of what will be a months long snowstorm. The odds are stacked against them.

Mulder emerges from the gas station and hurries to the truck.

“Find what you were looking for?” she asks as he climbs back in.

He brushes the snow from his hair. “No luck.”

“Did you really think that an abandoned gas station would carry antibiotics?”

“I was hoping for some Motrin or Tylenol,” he says with a shrug, “but the over the counter meds were picked over long before we got here. I grabbed you this, though.”

Scully’s brows furrow. “A Twinkie?”

“I figured this was the next best thing.”

Scully chuckles, then turns the sponge cake over in her hands, examining it. “My God, Mulder, it looks fresh, like it’s just been pulled from the box. It’s in perfect condition.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I don’t think that’s a good thing-”

“Just eat it,” Mulder says. “Your stomach was growling the last hour of our drive.”

“I mean, the amount of preservatives in this-”

“We are surviving the apocalypse, and it’s preservatives you’re worried about?”

“I’m not sure this,” she says, holding the Twinkie up for him to see, “qualifies as edible.”

“Scully.”

“I’m too tired to argue, Mulder-”

“Then stop arguing and eat the Twinkie.”

Scully rolls her eyes, and after a moment tears open the wrapper. She holds it to her nose and sniffs the snack cake. “It even smells fresh.”

“Eat the damn Twinkie, Scully.”

“I am!” She pulls it from the wrapper and dramatically takes a bite. “I am currently eating the Twinkie, Mulder,” she says around the food in her mouth. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” he says with a forced smile. “How is it?”

“Delicious, actually,” she replies seriously before taking another bite. “Better than I remember.”

Mulder purses his lips and shakes his head, but doesn’t say a word. He celebrates his victory silently as the truck crawls down the road. “There’s a settlement a few miles ahead. I figured we could stop for a while, get out of the truck, stretch our legs a for a while.”

“How do you know that?”

“There was a man who had taken up residence at the gas station,” he replies. “He told me about it, said it wasn’t too far. He also gave me the Twinkie.”

Scully’s brow rises. “What did you have to do for the trade?”

“What… are you implying?”

“You were gone for awhile,” she says with a shrug.

Mulder smiles. “I told him my wife was sick and that we were out of food. It was that or a can of sardines.”

“That was very kind of him.”

“He also mentioned that the people in this settlement might have medicine. And gas.”

“Are we low on fuel?” she asks.

His eyes flick to the steering column, then back to the road. “Getting there.”

The wrapper crinkles as she stuffs it into her pocket, and she turns to stare out the window, her teeth worrying her bottom lip. She doesn’t ask how far they can make it, or tell him that their luck seems to be taking a turn for the worst. No food, no vitamins, and now no gas.

A tickle forms in the center of her chest, nagging with each breath that she takes until she can take it no longer and coughs. But once she starts she can’t stop, her ribs contracting as a coughing fit wracks through her weak body, and she grips the dash for support.

“Are you ok?” Mulder asks, and she can feel his worry permeating off of him.

She tries to tell him that she’s fine, but the coughs persist until she gags, bile burning the back of her throat..

“Scully, you need to breathe.”

Finally, she gulps in a full breath and exhales with ease. The fit subsides leaving her weaker than before, her body heavy with exhaustion and her skin freckled with perspiration. Mulder grips her arm and pulls her to him, tucking her into the warmth of his side. She doesn’t argue, instead snuggles further into the crook of his arm. She’s asleep within minutes.

—

“Scully, you gotta see this. Scully,” she hears him say.

Don’t think. Just pick up the phone and make it happen- Five years together, Scully. How many times I been wrong?- Why did they assign me to you in the first place, Mulder? To debunk your work. To rein you in, to shut you down- You’ve kept me honest… you’ve made me a whole person. I owe you everything, Scully, and you owe me nothing.

The Antarctic wind nips at her cheeks and her toes have lost all feeling. She grips Mulder and tugs him into her lap, holding him close. As far as she can see, the snow shines blindingly bright under the sun, and the crater gapes just a few feet away.

Pulled from the pod, crawling through the pipe, crawl, crawl faster.

Mulder groans in her embrace, and she holds him closer, trying to will her body heat to him. It’s so cold, she thinks as they both shiver. We’ll both die out here. Lord, she prays. Give us strength. Please give us the strength to make it out of here alive and survive.

It’s so cold.

She wakes to movement, her body being jostled as if she were a ragdoll. His arms wrap around her waist and swoop under her legs. She’s being lifted. “Cold,” she utters.

“I know, Scully,” she hears him say. “We’ll get you inside in a sec.”

She rests her head on his shoulder and everything fades away.

—

Pulsating. The slow, steady footfall like a heartbeat. The brown walls are the color of over-baked brownies, and, like a lazy pendulum, they wave back and forth. She’s caught in the eye of a tornado of whispers as murmurs swirl around her, and she feels the vice around her chest and legs constrict. Two, three, four times a light shines in her eyes, its bright white traveling from the far left of her vision all the way to the right, only to start over again, it’s motion making her stomach turn.

—

The glow of an orange light blinks above her and she squeezes her eyes shut. Hushed voices. Need to remove some clothing. Hands on her forehead, her neck, her belly. Fever dangerously high. She feels the warmth tugged from her ankles, then slowly peeled down the length of her feet, as if someone were sucking the heat directly from the lower part of her body. She gasps at the stark coldness she feels applied to her feet, burning the skin of her arch, and then it’s everywhere. Her armpits, her forehead, her neck, between her legs. Her breaths quicken as she’s overwhelmed by the freezing.

—

“Nobody else I’ve contacted will listen, and I have nowhere else to turn. It’ll begin with an intense heatwave,” the letter reads. The temperature will rise many degrees rapidly, unsettling the earth’s surface. The heat will provoke instability, initiating the first of many earthquakes.”

Scully reaches across their desk for her glasses and continues reading. Cloud seeding, evidence of large-scale weather manipulation, weather weaponry for murder.

How has Mulder ignored this?

One false move, the letter warns, and it will end catastrophically, marking the extinction of all human life.

“Dana?”

Scully glances up to see her mother standing in the doorway, and the view of their office melts, shifting, morphing into a hospital room. Her mother’s smile is warm but laced with sorrow as she crosses the tile floor and seats herself next to Scully’s legs on the edge of the bed.

“It’s time to wake up, sweetheart.”

“I’m awake,” Scully says.

Her mother reaches over and runs her hands down the side of Scully’s face. “Listen to my voice. Open your eyes, Dana,” she says, then grips her shoulders. “You need to wake up. Wake up!”

Scully stares at her mother, her brows pinched in confusion. “Mom, can you hear me? I’m awake!”

“Miss Dana? Come on now, look at me.” Scully’s eyes flutter open and a figure hovers over her, dabbing a cool, damp washcloth to the side of her face. Scully leans into the touch. “There you are. Good morning.”

“Mom?”

“No, hon, my name’s Joan,” the woman says and slowly comes into view as Scully’s vision clears. Her dark hair with streaks of grey sits piled high into a bun atop her head, and her deep brown eyes sweep over Scully. “But you can call me Joanie, everyone else does. Here, sit up just a bit and take a sip of this.”

Joanie cups the back of Scully’s head and holds a glass of water to her lips, tipping it gently. The water cascades over her tongue, catching in the back of her throat, and she turns her face to the side, coughing.

“Oh, oh no. Sorry about that,” Joanie says. “There ya go, get it out. Good girl.” She holds the glass to Scully’s lips. “Here, let’s try again. You need your fluids.”

Scully obeys, and successfully takes a few sips, slower this time. “Where’s Mulder?” she asks.

“I’m here,” she hears his voice come from somewhere behind her, then feels his hand in her hair.

Joanie steps aside. “Don’t keep her up too long,” she warns Mulder as he pulls a chair to the side of Scully’s bed. “She needs her rest.”

He nods and seats himself, taking Scully’s hand between his.

“Mulder, where are we?”

“At a settlement just a few hours outside of Winnipeg.”

A weak smile spreads across her face, and she stifles another cough, breathing slowly. “We’re so close,” she whispers.

He squeezes her hand. “Joanie says you should be feeling better soon. Another day or two and we can hit the road.”

“Another-” she starts, but the tickle in her chest returns with a vengeance and she turns to the side to cough into her pillow. “Another day or two?” she asks one she catches her breath. “How long have we been here?”

He hesitates, watching her.

“Mulder?”

“About three days.”

Scully’s eyes widen. “Three days?” She looks around the room, searching for any sort of familiarity. She must recognize something after staying here for so long. But the walls, the furniture, all of it is new to her. She glances down at her body, groaning when she doesn’t recognize the clothing she now wears or even recall changing. The exhaustion, the nausea, the loss of time, the raging fever- her symptoms are worsening, she admits to herself and feels her chin quiver. “Mulder, I’m not getting better.”

“You will,” he says simply, and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’ll get better soon, and we’ll finish the trip to Canada. You’ll save the world, Scully.”

“I need antibiotics. There is an infection somewhere in my body, and my immune system is too weak to fight it. I-” she pauses, hot tears stinging her eyes. This is the end. Her mind trails back to West Virginia, to the old woman who lay on a cot, moaning through her last breath. Grandma Vic had died so quickly after falling ill, and Scully is stunned to realize that she is destined to suffer the same fate. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why? Scully, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

She winces as she shifts her body to face him, the sharp ache from her fever ricocheting through her limbs. She takes a deep breath and holds it, waiting for her discomfort to subside a bit. “After everything we’ve been through, our journey together,” she says, “this is where it ends. Mulder, you need to go.”

“I can’t…” 

“Take my journal,” she insists. “Take it, go to Winnipeg and stop this. Please, Mulder, this needs to end.”

Mulder shakes his head. “I’m not going anywhere without you-”

“You’ve seen this before,” she says as she gestures to herself in the bed. “You’ve seen what a simple cold can do to people in this world, Mulder. Let alone an infection. We both know the chances of my leaving this settlement are slim at best.” Her tears burn like acid as they trail down her face, and she grits her teeth. “Go. Please.”

She watches as the fight leaves his body and his shoulders slump, her words finally sinking in. She watches as his face twists into a frown, the moment he finally comprehends what she’s said. Mulder ducks his head, defeated, and pulls her hand to his lips. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to end.”

“I know,” she whispers. “When you opened that motel door and I saw your face,” she continues as her voice breaks, “that was the first time I truly felt hope. In that moment, I knew then that if I could find you, then I could stop this, too-”

The wind is knocked from her chest. A coughing fit rips from her throat so violently that her vision swims, and pain sears through her cranium. She hears the panic in Mulder’s voice as he begs her to calm down. “Breathe, Scully, breathe,” but the spasms in her chest won’t cease. Her lungs are burning and her brain screams for oxygen, and just as quickly as the fit began, her world simply stops.


	15. Chapter 15

“…should know by now, Scully, that I have a tendency to be stubborn…”

She is unable to open her eyes, and around her the world shakes and rumbles with the force of a lethargic earthquake. Not again, she thinks, waiting for what she knows will be initiated by the tremor and it’s destruction. But instead of the discernable screaming of the condemned, she hears the richness in his voice, emphasized by the low hum of an engine, the seamless combination relieving the panic that rises in her chest. 

—

“-probably a good thing he and I haven’t crossed paths. I always thought that bald-headed sonofabitch had a thing for you…”

Clickclickclickclickclickclickclick like the methodical tapping of a pen on the surface of their desk, her teeth chatter as a chill sears across her skin. A blanket weighs heavily across her body and she pulls it to her chin, wanting to bury her face into the pillow beneath her head. She doesn’t flinch at the prick in the soft flesh of her inner elbow.

—

“…killed me watching that, but Joanie said the cold compress would help…”

She feels a groan crawl from her throat to the back of her teeth as her stomach turns, a wave of nausea cresting over her as her mouth fills with saliva. Her head spins with the slightest of movements, and her body tingles with the feeling of weightlessness, but her nausea weighs her down to the mattress like a ton of cinderblocks.

“I should have told you a hundred times. I know you know, but I love you. If I’m being really honest, I think I’ve loved you since the moment I met you.”

—

“…origins of the urban legend differ from region to region. Maryland believes he is the result of a scientist’s DNA experiment gone wrong, but Kentucky claims he was a circus freak seeking revenge…” There is a lazy tranquility in the way he speaks, and she pictures him kicked back in a chair, slouching into the back cushion, his right foot resting on his left knee. In the distance she hears the flutter of paper and the mild chatter of voices, and after many wake ups such as this one, she gives up before even trying to figure out where they are. At least she’s comfortable, she tells herself. The bed beneath her feels like an actual mattress- soft with a little cushion, not stiff like a forgotten cot from someone’s basement that hasn’t seen the light of day since the seventies.

With a surprisingly clear mind, she begins the task of mentally performing a physical examination on herself. No pain, just a mild aches in her joints that is likely from disuse. The temperature of her body appears normal with the sensitivity of her skin completely subsided, indicating that her fever has gone.

“Now, Scully, this part is important,” she hears him continue. “I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but it’s life or death, so you need to listen closely.”

Behind closed eyelids, she fights the urge to smile as she feels him lean in.

“This creature is known to use either hypnosis or voice mimicry to lure trespassers to their death. As you know that can be exceptionally dangerous, given the fact that humans tend to be driven by emotion and their emotional ties to their loved ones. Imagine hearing my voice, disjointed, something about it not quite right, calling out your name-”

“The goatman, Mulder?” she croaks. “Really?”

When she opens her eyes, Mulder is next to her with a smile on his face. Behind him a door stands propped open, and she sees someone rush past. Around them the walls are bright white, a sight so rare in The After.

“Hey, good morning, sunshine,” he says as he takes her hand in his, and his smile widens, shining so bright that it eclipses the lamp that hangs from the ceiling. 

“Where are we?” she asks after she clears her throat. “Where’s Joanie?”

“I assume back at the Littleton settlement, nursing people back to health. How are you feeling?”

“Where are we?” she asks again. 

Mulder squeezes her hand. “Winnipeg, Canada.”

Scully gasps and her eyes widen. Winnipeg, Canada. “We- we made it?”

“Barely,” he replies with a chuckle. “We were running on fumes by the time we pulled into the parking lot, I was scared to even tap the gas. We just kind of coasted to the front door.”

“Was I given antibiotics before we left?”

He shakes his head. “They searched, but weren’t able to obtain any.”

Scully’s brows furrow with confusion. She was so sure she was going to die, resigning herself that she had finally reached her end. “Then-” she begins to ask and gestures to her healing body. “How…”

“Joanie,” he replies simply. “Between her constant care and her special tea concoction- which I suspect was a liquid form of magic- she was able to bring your fever down.”

“I don’t remember drinking tea.”

“I’d be surprised if you remembered anything, honestly.” His eyes shift a shade darker before he looks away, gripping her hand. She watches him, waiting for him to continue as residual pain and fear radiates from his body to hers. “It was really touch-and-go there for a few days. You were hallucinating and barely able to keep anything down, Scully. A few times your fever spiked so high that Joanie was preparing for convulsions.” After a moment he pulls her hand to his lips. “Scared the shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. 

“Don’t be. She did everything in her power to nurse you back to health once I told her you were going to save the world.”

Scully feels her skin flush with embarrassment, and pushes the blanket down to her waist. “She believed you?”

“She was skeptical at first, rightfully so, and it took a little convincing and a few passes through the journal, but in the end she believed me. Joanie believed in *you*.”

“Mulder.” Scully shakes her head.

“Once she deemed your fever manageable, and after I had bartered off everything we owned for a few gallons of fuel, we hit the road. You slept the entire drive. When we finally arrived here, they immediately administered an IV,” he says and then gestures to the IV stand that she hadn’t noticed until now, sitting just a few feet from the bed. The line hangs limply from the bag of saline solution, running to the site taped at her inner elbow.

“Everything we owned?” she asks.

“Even my extra pair of pants.”

She feels her stomach flutter and the panic spread to her chest. “What about my journal?”

“That’s the only thing I kept,” he replies. “Once the people here got you settled and administered your IV, I turned it over to them.”

“You turned it over to them?” she repeats, unable to keep her voice from rising. “Mulder, what were you thinking? We don’t know the people here, or if they are able to-”

He reaches across her and shakes the blanket to the foot of the bed. “Come with me.”

“What? Where?”

His touch is gentle but firm when he helps her to the edge of the bed. She squeezes her eyes shut when her head begins to spin, feeling the earth beneath her sway as she clenches the bedsheet.

“Dizzy?” he asks.

She tries to ask where he’s taking her, but the vertigo has stolen her voice. She feels the weight of a blanket laid across her shoulders, then his arms around her waist and beneath her legs. He pulls her against his chest, holding her tight, knowing she is too weak to protest.

Mulder keeps a slow pace as he walks them into the hallway. Bright lights hang from the ceiling, and an older gentleman approaches them with a smile on his face.

“Doctor Scully, it’s good to see you awake,” he says, and Scully forces a smile. His greying hair curls around his face, skimming the edges of his wire rimmed glasses. His eyes shift to Mulder. “You’re going to show her?”

“Yeah-” Mulder begins to reply.

“Show me what?” Scully asks.

“Just wait.”

The older man places his hand on her knee. “Thank God for you, young lady,” he says, then pats Mulder on the shoulder before they continue down the hall.

Before Scully can ask again where they are going, more strangers stop them, some offering words of thanks, some apparently just wanting to touch her. They hold her hand, grip her shoulder, an elderly woman reaches around both her and Mulder to envelope them in an awkward hug.

“Such a blessing, Miss Scully,” she whispers before kissing Scully’s cheek.

“Mulder, what is going on?” she asks once the woman is out of earshot. He doesn’t answer as they turn the corner, and she sees two men standing guard at a set of double doors. They nod at him and reach for the handles. “Why does everyone keep-”

Light floods in from behind the doors, so radiant and bright that Scully squints. Mulder pulls her tighter to him and carries her over the threshold.

“Oh, my God,” she utters.

Sunlight, not rain or snow, pours from above. White puffy clouds hang across the sky, scattered randomly through the airy light blue that continues as far as she can see.

“You did it,” Mulder says. “The notes in your journal- using them as a guide, the people here were able to reconfigure the program and the schematics of the satellite. You did this.”

Tears flood her eyes as she tips her head back into Mulder’s shoulder, the sun’s warmth kissing her cheeks, her nose, her forehead. She sighs into the sun’s embrace, relishing their moment of reuniting, and allows herself to cry.

“You saved the world, Scully.”

 

EPILOGUE

Two months later

Scully places the pot of water on the wood burning stove, then turns away. She passes the three lopsided chairs that Mulder has crafted from fallen trees of their surrounding woods, his skill still a work in progress, and comes to stand in the doorway. A breeze flows through the small cabin, sending ripples of cotton up her shins and thighs, smelling fresh and rich like a slowly drying earth.

The past employees that had sought shelter at the Center for Atmospheric Research had been unaware of what they possessed, unaware of what the program they had at their fingertips was capable of. It had taken more to convince them, he told Scully later. He’d been called a hack and a conspiracy theorist, a few of the past employees had just laughed at him, while others rolled their eyes. But Dr. Kelly, with his kind eyes and curly grey hair, believed him.

When Mulder wasn’t sitting at her side, he worked tirelessly, offering himself and his time to ‘The Greater Good,’ as he called it. He fetched and prepared cups of instant coffee, read and reread Scully’s entries aloud, he mediated arguments between Jeff, the IT technician, and Rory, the meteorologist. Roughly forty-eight hours later, the clouds broke and the snow ceased.

In the last few weeks a heatwave has rolled in, pushing aside the brutal winter that leaves behind stubborn piles of snow that has yet to melt. Bits of grass struggle to grow but persevere, the landscape a milk chocolate with polka-dots of green. She smiles, still trying to figure out how to get used to seeing color in this world.

Thwack

Now, a few yards away, Mulder lifts the ax into the air and twists from side to side, stretching his back. His hair is damp, his skin freckled with beads of sweat. He swings.

Thwack

The firewood tumbles to the ground, and his pants sag on his hips as he bends over to toss the pieces into the growing pile. He turns then, shielding his eyes, his gaze catching hers. A broad smile spreads across his face, and a warm feeling floods through her- pure in its simplicity, rushing throughout her body. Her eyes narrow as she struggles to grasp the emotion, turning it over and over in her mind.

Mulder waves.

Hope, she realizes suddenly, then laughs. She feels hope.

She lifts her hand and returns his wave.

The sun shines in The After.


End file.
